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It matters because as a developer I'll get support requests from users who claim that my software has issues, even when the root cause is unrelated to my code.
by imiric 1y ago
It matters because as a developer I'll get support requests from users who claim that my software has issues, even when the root cause is unrelated to my code. If I explicitly document that I support a single way of deploying the software, and that way is a self-contained artifact with all the required runtime dependencies, which was previously thoroughly tested in my CI pipeline, then I can expect far less support requests from users.
Again, this matters a lot to smaller projects and teams. Larger projects have the resources to offer extended support for various environments and deployment procedures, but smaller ones don't have this luxury. A flood of support requests can lead to exhaustion, demotivation, and burnout, especially in open source projects and those without a profitable business model. Charging for support wouldn't fix this if the team simply doesn't have the bandwidth to address each request.