As most of you probably know, iMeta has been actively participating in the NHibernate project for most of this year, firstly with porting the AST parser over from Hibernate and now with active development on a new Linq provider. Around early May, we started discussing ways that we could derive some commercial benefit from our involvement in a way that would provide benefit to the community and income for iMeta. As a result we are pursuing a number of options, one of which is to offer a support package.
Due to time constraints (we have paying customers, and they have a nasty habit of taking priority!), we hadn't launched this yet, but following Ayende's announcement a few days ago now feels like an appropriate time to do so. We have had a good discussion with Ayende about what we're doing, and I'm happy to say that he fully supports us. A bit of competition is, after all, a good thing for both customers and NHibernate. Although we are slightly gutted that he beat us to it :)
Fortunately, we have taken a different approach to Ayende, so this does offer the community a real choice about how they best support their NHibernate-based developments. See here for details on the program, pricing information, how to sign up etc.
As well as announcing our package, I'm also delighted to say that it comes with the backing and support of Fabio Maulo - although iMeta has a great deal of NHibernate experience, we're the first to admit that we don't know it all and having Fabio behind us to assist with the thornier problems is a great asset. Plus it's also great to see someone who has dedicated so much of his own time to the project getting something back in return.
I hope that between the great community support through places like the NHUsers mailing list and StackOverflow, Ayende's support offering and now ours, there is a real choice for NHibernate users out there and less of a barrier for adopting this great product.