The support story for GlassFish is quite common in Open Source projects: a USERS mailing list provides Community Support, and companies, like Sun, provide Enterprise-Level Support. Sun's commercial support includes support services (phone and email access, knowledge database), and access to a regular stream of patch releases that provide qualified builds with the latest bug fixes. These patch releases start after a final / stable public release has happened; for example, we are readying the 3rd update patch since the latest public GlassFish v1 in December (GF v1UR1p1).

All these update patches are based on source changes that are pushed through to the public source repositories together with other changes, which means that when a new public final / stable release is done all the bug fixes will be included. This is a common arrangement for commercial support, and companies like Covalent have been doing it for years.

So, how do you buy commercial support for GlassFish from Sun? If you have a contact with Sun's sales, you could ask them. In any case, you can also just go to the electronic store for your contry; in the case of the US, the link is here. If you follow the link you will get to the page to buy support for Sun Java System Application Server PE 9.0, which is just Sun's name for the distribution of GlassFish; the only difference is the installer (there should be a clear reference to GlassFish in the page; we will fix that). You will see two support offers. Standard gives you 12/5 support; Premium is for 24/7 with interoperability support.

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Now, the video. I have a soft spot for Castellers; not just am I from Barcelona but I really like the community built and egalitarian messages. Shown is the first 3 de 10 (3 people in the base rising 10 high) in the history. Going this high can only be done with a very large support base; in this case a pinya, folre i manilles. And, as it is not unlikely, when going very high, you run the risk of falling down, and the support is so you don't get hurt...