Vyatta has the following general policies surrounding the development, release, and updates of the Vyatta Core. These policies are not set in stone; we reserve the right to modify, update, or ignore these policies at any point in time. These are simply the general targets that we shoot for in terms of our behavior surrounding the Vyatta Core. When we deviate, we'll try to be up front about what we're doing and why we're doing it, communicating such information in the Forums.

Released As-Is

First, it's important to note that the Vyatta Core is released as-is. Vyatta does not make any warranties about the software. The vyatta.org site is provided as a general resource to the Vyatta community, but we do not guarantee that the information contained on it is correct.

Release Frequency

Generally, Vyatta aims to produce a major version of the Vyatta Core edition every 6 to 12 months. Ideally, we would hit a 6-month stride, but sometimes the intersection of available resources, desired features, and other demands will lengthen that time period. Generally, we'll try to keep the community updated as to future release features and timing using the roadmap pages on vyatta.org and the Forums.

Support

Vyatta provides the infrastructure for community-based, self-help support for the Vyatta Core via the various resources and Forums on vyatta.org. Vyatta community members are welcome to create accounts and make forum posts, or browse and search the site and forums anonymously. While many Vyatta employees also post to the Forums, all such postings are done on a best-effort basis. There is no guarantee that Vyatta employees will answer specific posts or provide complete answers even when they do post. Other community members may also post advice or help in response to a posting. There is obviously no guarantee that such community-provided advice or help will be correct or useful.

While the vyatta.org site also supports a private message feature, Vyatta employees cannot respond to direct solicitations for 1-on-1 help or assistance. Even when your network is down. Even when something really, really bad has happened.

In short, one of the greatest values of a commercial Vyatta subscription is the right to interact directly with the Vyatta Technical Assistance Center (VTAC) with response times based on your purchased subscription level. If you are deploying Vyatta in a business-critical network where you will need quality support that is there when things are a mess, we highly recommend that you purchase a Vyatta subscription. If you choose to deploy the Vyatta Core in a production network, you should be prepared to support it yourself.

Source Code

Vyatta makes a source code respository available to stimulate community development and fulfill its obligations under a variety of open source licenses for the various components present in the Vyatta Core and Subscription Edition products. Generally, the source code repository has the latest version of code in the system, including code currently in development. Technically adept users are welcome to rebuild Vyatta from source. Questions about building the software should be posted to the Hackers forum on vyatta.org. Unfortunately, due to the nature of software development, Vyatta cannot guarantee that the source code will be buildable at any given point in time, or that it will represent stable functionality when it does build.