Earlier this year, JNCC announced that they wanted to identify a private sector partner to provide the central support and maintenance for Recorder 6. We are pleased to announce that arrangements are nearing completion for that to be taken on by a consortium whose members are Mike Weideli, John van Breda and Sally Rankin. Mike and Sally have been Recorder resellers, or JNCC Recorder Approved Experts, since the year 2000. John worked on the development of Recorder 2000/2 and Recorder 6 when he worked for Dorset Software.
The contract will be funded by JNCC with contributions from the country agencies. Once it is finalised work will commence on the next release of Recorder 6. In the meantime, the consortium would like to encourage users to make good use of the Recorder forum. When problems reported on the forum are confirmed as bugs, they are logged as such in their tracking system ‘Mantis’ and they will be selecting various issues from that for correction in the next release. Mantis already contains many of the known bugs in Recorder 6. Given the current constraints on public sector funding they will be unable to fix a large number of bugs but they will do all they can to improve the system.
The contract includes an allowance for forum support which will enable Mike, John and Sally to continue to respond to many, but not all, posts on the forum. Users are recommended to seek help via the forum for the first line of support, not least because this is free to them. It has the advantage of making the information supplied available to other users who may be experiencing similar problems. It also helps ensure a response from the person best equipped to provide it. Users are welcome to contact Recorder resellers for support but charges may apply – see the JNCC website for more information.