Lisp Support and Maintenance
This page describes how we provide support and maintenance for LispWorks.
We supply these services under these terms.
License
Your License for LispWorks Enterprise, Professional, HobbyistDV or Hobbyist Edition, or LispWorks for Mobile Runtime, allows you free access to patch bundle releases. These downloadable Patch Bundles are made available by LispWorks Ltd from time to time.
With a newly purchased License, we also offer 30 days free "Getting Started" Support. Getting Started support covers only installation and other typical 'new user' issues. A LispWorks License does not otherwise provide for technical Support.
Maintenance
Maintenance is available for LispWorks Enterprise and Professional Editions. Maintenance offers you free upgrades to Product Releases, for example from LispWorks 7.1 to LispWorks 8.0 or from LispWorks 8.0 to LispWorks 8.1. To qualify for an upgrade, your Maintenance Contract must be current on the date of the relevant Product Release.
Maintenance Contracts can only be started in conjunction with the purchase of a LispWorks license, and last for one year.
Maintenance Contracts can be renewed annually before the expiry date. We send reminder messages approximately one month before expiry.
The Maintenance Contract does not provide for technical Support.
Support
A Support Pack is a contract offering you technical support and advice by email from LispWorks experts. This can include expedited fixes in advance of Patch Bundle releases.
The contract may allow only a limited number of Chargeable Support Incidents. You can get further technical support by purchasing a Support Pack of extra Chargeable Support Incidents.
Support Packs last for a fixed period of one year and may be purchased at any time.
We supply technical support under these terms.
Product Releases
A Product Release is a full LispWorks distribution including the LispWorks executable. Major and minor Product Releases are identified by industry standard version numbers. LispWorks 8.0 was a major Product Release. LispWorks 7.1 was a minor Product Release.
Customers with current Maintenance Contracts qualify for free upgrades to new Product Releases.
Patch Bundles
A Patch Bundle is a distribution of numbered patch files which are loaded into LispWorks on startup. Installing a Patch Bundle upgrades LispWorks, for example from LispWorks 6.0 to LispWorks 6.0.1.
Patch Bundle releases are free, regardless of whether you have a Maintenance Contract. LispWorks Ltd will not normally support users who fail to install the latest Patch Bundle.
Private Patches
LispWorks customers with a current Support Pack, who need a particular fix, may request a patch. A patch distributed in this way is a Private Patch, contained in a named file.
Such a request may constitute one or more Chargeable Support Incidents. If so, we will inform you, and on completion of the incident(s) your account of available Support Incidents will be decremented.
Private Patches are often distributed subsequently as numbered patches in a Patch Bundle, and the fix will usually appear in the next minor or major release as well, though we do not guarantee this for every Private Patch.
Support Incidents
An incident is defined as a single support issue (that is, it cannot be broken into subordinate parts) with a LispWorks product and the reasonable effort needed to resolve it.
Some incidents can be resolved freely, others are chargeable.
Chargeable Support Incidents
Typically incidents are chargeable when they require work from us such as writing, compiling or testing patches, updating documentation, analysing or debugging your code, finding workarounds, providing technical advice or other significant effort.
In particular, please note that we may regard fixes for bugs in its own Lisp products, and for shortcomings in the documentation, as chargeable. Whilst most bugs are eventually fixed in a patch release or minor or major Product Release, this policy reflects the reality that our engineers, quality assurance and support staff must spend time on providing expedited fixes outside of our normal product schedules.
We will inform you, before proceeding with the work required, if a support incident is chargeable.
LispWorks Ltd is the only arbiter on whether or not an incident is chargeable. However, it will usually not be chargeable if any of the following apply:
- The request is made within the 30 days 'getting started' period and concerns only installation or typical 'new-user' issues.
- The request can be met by directing you to existing documentation, or is trivially easy to answer.
- Debugging was requested and it transpired that the problem was in our code and that it would be unreasonable to expect you to have deduced this.
- A previous chargeable bug fix was faulty and this is reported within 30 days of receipt. That is, we will support chargeable fixes F.O.C. for 30 days.
Support Packs
A Support Pack covers 5, 10 or 20 Chargeable Support Incidents. It lasts for a fixed period of one year and may be purchased at any time.