Do you pay for Subversion support?

Question

My team wants to switch from a safe source to something else (finally). I think we have narrowed down to Team Server 2010 or Subversion.

I would prefer Subversion, but my boss is worried about how we get support if we use Subversion, and something went wrong. It has been suggested that we pay for support .

So my question is for those using Subversion: do you pay for support? Have you ever needed this?

Answer 1

We never paid for support. We could always solve problems ourselves or with the help of the community.

Answer 2

No, we do not pay for it, we do not need it. Answers can be found on google or here on SO. If I had a problem, I would ask here how SO is, and will probably get an answer comparable to paid support of level 2 or 3, possibly faster.

Answer 3

We use SVN and do not have any commercial support contract. Every time we have a question, we read a book or send Subversion mailing lists (subversion.apache.org).

CollabNet provides consulting and training for SVN, so if you are looking for someone to pay, they will be a good place to start. (Www.collab.net)

Answer 4

SVN has excellent documentation and community support. It's much easier to deal with MS. If you are worried about hosting, there are many SVN hosting providers who will take care of the hosting aspect, check svnhostingcomparison.com

Answer 5

Subversion is open source. You will not pay for it. If something goes wrong, there is a lot of great documentation and a big community.

Answer 6

In 99% of cases, I can figure out the problem myself.

There are also commercial sites that will host subversion.

-daniel

Answer 7

If you want to switch to Subversion and want to get support, I recommend that you go with the Subversion provider. I work for ProjectLocker , but if you use Google "subversion hosting", several options appear.

The Subversion code base is incredibly stable, and we never had a problem with the basic functionality not working as advertised. We have some patented fixes for the parts of the product that we wrote, but this is a solution to our unique scaling needs, and not due to product flaws. In our experience, any single large installation will be more than adequately served by standard code, even if you have hundreds of developers on your team.

Your support needs are likely to be related to using the product or administering the product. For both, The Subversion Book is an excellent guide that explains in detail how to use the product. Most Subversion hosting providers also have technical support that can answer usage questions, as well as web interfaces that facilitate product administration. Finally, posting a specific Subversion error message to Google goes a long way; people have been using this product in the wild for almost 10 years and have seen everything they can see.