DACS Support

If you are having trouble installing, configuring, or using DACS, your first step should be to make sure that you are using the most recent release of DACS.

Product support packages are available, along with a wide range of professional services. All technical support is provided by members of the DACS development team, the people who know DACS best. It is these services, together with revenue from commercial licensing, that we rely on to fund DACS development work. DACS cannot continue to exist without financial support from its user community.

Questions and Bug Reports

If you need help or have a question about DACS, whether it can be used to solve a certain problem, or if you would like to suggest a new feature or improvement, we would like to hear from you!

We are especially interested in reports of bugs and security-related weaknesses. If something doesn't work as documented, or if the documentation is incorrect or incomplete, please let us know! We want DACS to be as good as we can possibly make it - we can do this better with your help - and we want DACS to be used.

You may find an answer to your problem in the Tips area. The FAQ might also be helpful. Technical documentation for the latest release is available.

Please use SourceForge's forums or bug reporting system, or contact us directly. You can post to the SourceForge forums anonymously. We try to respond within one business day.

Professional Services

DSS and Metalogic offer a wide variety of professional services for DACS and authentication and authorization technologies. Because DACS is open source software, it is revenue from these kinds of services that makes it possible for us to continue to develop and improve DACS.

Professional services include:

• Technical support
  Your technical questions about DACS, its installation, and how to configure and administer it can be answered promptly by email or phone. We can help you to install and configure DACS on your platforms.
• Consulting services
  We can provide technical analysis and recommendations to help you to understand your authentication and access control requirements and how to address them. If DACS is an appropriate solution, we can advise you on how best to integrate it with your environment or products.
• Partnerships
  If you are involved with a project having a security requirement that might be satisfied by DACS, a partnership or subcontracting arrangement may be possible. We will also consider helping open source projects get started with DACS.
• Training
  We can help your technical staff to get up to speed quickly with DACS.
• Customization
  We can assist technical staff to tailor DACS to their requirements or write middleware, add new features to DACS on a priority basis, or develop a custom version of DACS for you.
• Porting
  We can port DACS to platforms not officially supported by the standard distribution.
• Maintenance agreements
  Bug fixes and related technical support on a priority basis can be contracted for.
• Preferred customer agreements
  Those with a significant stake in the future direction of DACS can help to direct its development, gain access to interim releases, and be kept up-to-date with respect to long-range plans.

Per-hour and fixed-cost pricing are available.

We have worked with many system administrators and developers to incorporate DACS functionality into their software, add their authentication methods to DACS, and assist with testing and deployment.

Special Pricing

For qualifying educational institutions and non-profit organizations, significant discounts are given for product support and professional services. Please inquire for details.

Alternative Licensing

Licensing terms different from those of the open source license can be purchased from DSS.

Commercial licensing, license maintenance, and technical support options for DACS are:

• royalty-free
• flexible, because they are unbundled
• simple to understand and administer, with fixed costs
• very attractively priced, even for small companies or small projects

Because they are eligible for a discount on technical support, even those who only need open source licensing may benefit from a commercial license. Please contact us for details and current pricing.

Notifications

If you would like to be notified about new releases of DACS, security issues, and other important news, you may subscribe to our low-volume mailing list. You may unsubscribe at any time. (If you encounter problems with these links, you may use our email form.) You will be contacted by email to confirm your request. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose.

Beta Testers

Although we would like to support DACS on a wider variety of platforms, we simply do not have the time and resources to do so without your help. By joining the DACS Beta List, you will have the opportunity to test each DACS beta release and report problems before the official release ships, helping to ensure the latest release of DACS will work on your platform. If you decide to join you will receive email notices during the beta testing period but you are never required to participate.

To request to be added to the DACS Beta List, you may subscribe, indicating the hardware and software platform of interest to you. You will be contacted by email to confirm your request and provide additional details. You may unsubscribe at any time. (If you encounter problems with these links, you may use our email form.) Your email address will not be used for any other purpose. Please note that only a small number of volunteers are needed for any particular platform.