Nestor Casado

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7 years, 3 months ago.

Is there official (paid) support for mbed ?

This is a duplicate of question: https://developer.mbed.org/forum/mbed/topic/26790/

Which gets no answer.

We're considering mbed for serious production, not for hobbies or prototypes, so we need to understand what is the level of support given by arm. Is it only the best-effort community support or is there an official channel with SLAs-like contracts available?

Thanks for sharing some pointers, Regards, -nestor

Problem with forums is that barely anyone sees the questions there, since it isn't shown on the frontpage anymore (or hidden due to all library updates, etc).

While not 100% sure, I think the answer to your question is that there are no SLAs available. The good part is that mbed is open source, so if someone at your location makes himself familiar with the mbed architecture problems can be fixed by yourself. Can't make more of it as a regular user :).

posted by Erik - 10 Jan 2017

Erik,

"if someone at your location makes himself familiar with the mbed architecture, you can fix the problems yourself". True, we can fix it ourselves, but the mbed code is large and inmature, and problems like:

https://developer.mbed.org/questions/69710/Tickers-crashhang-on-the-nRF51822-especi/ https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbed-os/issues/2242

And many others you could easily google, are difficult to understand and fix. I think the fix-it-yourself and contribute-back could be acceptable for certain kind of projects, but if you are basing a product launch with a mass production deadline and you hit one of those hard to find issues, which could be spread between ARM's code and any partner provided code and none at mbed/arm is accountable for helping solve the issue, then you are in bad shape.

In my opinion this may limit mbed adoption for truly commercial products for the moment. It may be different in the future once mbed is much more mature.

posted by Nestor Casado 13 Jan 2017

@Nestor Casado

Hi, sorry for the delayed response. We are checking the option of adding paid support for mbed. This is currently under evaluation and we would like to get more info about your targets and scope. Can you please e-mail us at support@mbed.org with more details (contact details) Please post here that you did (for easier follow up)

we will get back to you to follow this up

Thanks!

posted by Doron Papo 24 Jan 2017

2 Answers

Bill Bellis
7 years, 3 months ago.

This is probably the most frustrating part of mbed. No one is in charge. No one handles the problems. Just community supporters and the ever rotating mbed person of the month. We have had serious doubts going forward as well going forward with mbed for production. I wish someone from mbed would tell us what's going on as this is probably the best idea out there but the worst execution I've ever seen.

Accepted Answer
Austin Blackstone
7 years, 3 months ago.

There is a partnership track available. For more information please email partnership@mbed.com .

I'll email partnership@mbed to get their feedback, nevertheless,

https://developer.mbed.org/handbook/Partnership

says that partnership is mainly to "contribute to mbed" and make your software official. The question is more: Can a company get commercial paid support from ARM on mbed bugs and issues during development, or should the company go thru the community forum with the issues found and submit issues and pull requests to get the problems solved and features included when the community is able to work on those.

posted by Nestor Casado 10 Jan 2017