Element14 - is anyone present on this forum ?

Commenting since no-one else has.. as far as I understand, this software is community-supported, and that can include people working for Altium and Element14 and so on, but also includes users. 

As a general thing (not talking about Altium or Element14 specifically) community support cannot modify source code to fix bugs, unless they are working as developers for that firm or if the source code was available. Some members of the community could refer to the manufacturer of the software if they feel like it, but I don't believe anyone is obligated to do so, unless it's written into the agreement when you purchased the software (this would apply to any product from any business-to-business supplier, not just a software product).

So, not talking about Altuim software or Element14 specifically, but just generally, as far as I understand (laws are different in every country) for B2B purchases, the normal consumer rights do not apply, and the product doesn't have to be 100% error-free, provided it is generally usable (loosely speaking, since it varies from country to country). To override that, it would need to be part of the terms and conditions when it was purchased, and normally, one still cannot oblige anyone to fix bugs (general principal, otherwise it could be slavery to force someone to work), usually only a refund could ever be expected.

This of course means that in some cases, some problems when dealing with other businesses, if minor, might never be addressed. The only partial way around that is to have things specifically written into a contract (and to repeat, this still cannot ever guarantee that a problem will be fixed in code, because it might be too difficult, or economically unviable or so on, and the manufacturer could always choose not to do it regardless of contract, and if they cannot meet their contact obligations just provide a refund or whatever payment is in the contract instead).

Community support is fine when you have all the time in the world for a response and the community is large enough to have a knowledgeable and involved cross section.

Many community support forums (especially in semiconductors, for instance) have a number of their own engineers and support people "cruising" the threads to help where they can.  If you need a faster response, you better have a good relationship with the local FAE for the product.  Of course we're talking CS, though and the analogy would be AD with support a phone call away.  But still, without corporate involvement, or E14 being tasked to be present by agreement, CS is orphaned.

Several, including myself, have now posted on the inability to run CS without crashing.  In my case, the system is stable and unchanged over the past months.  The crashing might be Vault related, I don't know (typically closes with DXP.exe crashing).

I can't run CS anymore as of now.  If the problem with crashing is not addressed, I will do what I can to get a refund of my recent maintenance cost, whether via my credit card company or other method.

And sadly, kiss CS goodbye.  And no more positive recommendations for Altium (for which I've probably given 3 - 5 in the past few months).

Sorry for the rant mode but if you're going to produce a product like this then you NEED TO SUPPORT IT OR DIRECT ANOTHER COMPETENT BODY TO DO SO.

I personally would refuse to pay for maintenance in a showstopper scenario, and seek a refund for that if it's reasonable, i.e. what's the point paying maintenance if you cannot do something which you feel (others may not) halts the use of the product for you.

Regarding the 'Community support is fine when you have all the time in the world' and 'need to support it or find another competant body', sadly, they are under no obligation at all, if it's not in the contract. Think of it this way - what's the benefit to the manufacturer? (harsh reality, but true).
Without community support, a manufacturer would likely have to assign other staff to spend their time responding, tackling customer issues, testing things, reporting them if they really are defects, and so on. That is easily $1M or more in costs per year, for what could be a low-cost, low-volume product.
Right now, by a conservative estimate, they are saving at least $1M through community support I bet. That money would have to come from somewhere for them to offer a better contractual agreement. They build that cost into their higher-end products and maintenance agreements for those.

Community support for a package that doesn't have an organic community is rough.
Altium and e14-official reply to maybe 2 posts per year here. Majority of the other posts are dissatisfied users telling each others they aren't happy.
I haven't seen many posts where something gets resolved. It is what it is.

Totally agree with all you say. Everyone (i.e. Altium, element14, and users, and even non-users) for sure probably all wish the CircutiStudio community would grow to a size to keep users happy, and that the community could be cultivated to encourage users to share their findings, problem-solving for each other, and so on.

The traditional method is to merely price in more support etc., which Altium already do, with their (naturally) more expensive offerings.. i.e. a big part of the expensive offerings from Altium is the direct support without needing to rely on a community.

Jan Cumps said:

Altium and e14-official

There used to be a person dedicated to software support from the online stores side of Farnell that was dedicated to escalating software support issues for Altium and encouraged Altium to reply on the support forum.

There isn't any longer, this was over a year ago.

When I was finally told about this I changed the support links to point to Altium rather than to messaging the person / e-mailing the dedicated e-mail address (which I can only guess is no longer maintained).

There wasn't a lot I could do about this with the little information I was given.

The confusion may be that Altium's product page still (I checked last week) links to this community. 

I see there's a number of old links on their site.  I don't directly have a contact for them to help sort that out at the moment, though that won't stop me from asking.

I see there's a number of old links on their site.  I don't directly have a contact for them to help sort that out at the moment, though that won't stop me from asking.