documentation/docs/User-Guide_Board-Support-Rules.md

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# Board support Rules

## Overview

Support definitions, criteria and relationships for:

- [Platinum Support](#platinum-support)
- [Standard support](#standard-support)
- [Community maintained](#community-maintained)
- [Staging](#)

## Platinum Support

Platinum support is reserved for business relationships with the Armbian project and is out of the scope of this document. 

### Contact us

Please [contact Armbian](https://www.armbian.com/contact/) management for more information.

## Standard Support

### Benefits

* Armbian will publish and distribute "stable" images through its [mirror network](https://docs.armbian.com/Mirrors/) (behind automated closest mirror selection)
* Armbian will publish and distribute "rolling" [images](https://github.com/armbian/os/releases/latest) (on GitHub and individual download page)
* best-effort support to SBC maintainer to assure compatibility within the [Armbian Build Framework](https://github.com/armbian/build)
* best-effort team's unique expertise to assist maintainer with general challenges
* best-effort [automated testing](https://github.com/armbian/os#latest-smoke-tests-results) for basic hardware functionality
* best-effort compensation will be provided to maintainer from the "Armbian Community Fund" [[1]](https://github.com/sponsors/armbian) [[2]](https://liberapay.com/armbian) [[3]](https://forum.armbian.com/crowdfunding/)

### Requirements

For a SBC to be considered supported:

* must be beneficial to the Armbian project
* Armbian team must confirm and agree upon all supported boards statuses
* a named individual as "*maintainer*" with GitHub ID must be preset in the BOARD_MAINTAINER within [Board Configuration File](https://github.com/armbian/build/tree/main/config/boards)
* a named individual must commit to providing "*best effort*" support for their SBC on the Armbian forums
* maintainer must participate in the [Release Process](https://docs.armbian.com/Process_Release-Model/#release-coordinating)
* maintainer must sign-off that device has been tested, is stable, and ready for release during release process
* maintainer must have physical access to the SBC they are supporting
* maintainer can operate under pseudonym but must [reveal his identity](https://www.armbian.com/update-data/) to Armbian management
* maintainer should attend [developers meetings](https://forum.armbian.com/events/) held every Wednesday 7:00 PM CET
* when whole support burden is carried by maintainer and Armbian team, it will be labelled as "Pro bono"

???+ Info "Additional Caveats"

    * if the burden placed on the maintainer and Armbian team is too high, [crowdfunding campaign](https://forum.armbian.com/crowdfunding/) success will decide support
    * supported is **not** applied to a "board family" or group of related SBCs. It is per board
    * a maintainer can support multiple devices but must satisfy all requirements above per SBC
    * any individual can be a maintainer for a standard support SBC
    * missed major release will result in immediate forfeit of "Armbian Standard support" status and demotion to "Community maintained" status unless Armbian team grants exemption

## Community maintained

Community maintained devices are not under active supervision or development. Support status is unknown to Armbian team. It represents combined former CSC (community supported configuration) and EOS (end of support). Can be removed from Armbian code base at any time. Left as a courtesy in case a community member wants to attempt to resurrect maintenance.

Community maintained SBCs are exclusively supported by the community.

### Benefits

* Armbian will publish and distribute images through its [mirror network](https://github.com/armbian/mirror)
* Armbian will publish and distribute daily rolling [images](https://github.com/armbian/os/releases/latest) 
* periodic packages are built and published into Armbian's apt repository
* images are untested and Armbian team won't respond on troubles or apply any fixes.

### Requirements

* patch or component does not break Armbian Build Framework
* patch or component does not break build of supported boards or other CSCs
* pull requests needs community review. Armbian team will not review any code related to community supported SBC
* generally considered to "work most of the time"
* generally considered to receive periodic maintenance from community and upstream

## Staging

Work in progress (WIP) status is for when a maintainer has committed to a SBC, but is not ready to ship stable images.

### Benefits

All benefits of Community Supported SBCs apply to Staging as well.

* periodic / nightly CLI images are published by Armbian
* best-effort support to SBC maintainer to assure compatibility within the [Armbian Build Framework](https://github.com/armbian/build)
* best-effort team's unique expertise to assist maintainer with general challenges
* eligible for promotion to Standard Support

### Requirements

* must satisfy standard support criteria
* must show active development
* must compile successfully most of the time