FAQ

Non technical

Contact

I need support/consultation

Support subscriptions plans and information about level three (L3) support and consultation contracts is available at: https://www.mayan-edms.com/support/

Can I contact members of the development team?

Direct access to members of the development team is reserved for clients of a support or consultation contract.

I can’t pay for support/consultation

A community forum is available at https://forum.mayan-edms.com. Members of the development team visit the forum on occasions and might answer some questions on a voluntary basis.

I found a bug

For bugs, open an issue at https://gitlab.com/mayan-edms/mayan-edms/issues/.

I want to join the development team

Perfect! We need all the help we can get. Tell us where we can see what you’ve done using Mayan EDMS. It could be a fork, a new UI, an API client, a custom app, or anything else that you think will be able to evidence your dominion over the codebase or concepts.

I submitted an issue and it has not been fixed

There are many reason an issue might not get resolved and remain open for an extended period of time. We document on the issue itself the progress and when resolved will reference what commit fixed it and the version or approximate time for the code to make it into a production release. Some reason why issues remain open with no resolution are:

  • It was not an issue with the code. It happens that sometimes the problem lies with the operating system, the filesystem being used, the platform or packaging method.

  • It was not an issue but a question or a comment. The issue system is for reporting problems with the code. That said, we sometimes answer questions submitted as issues. For questions or discussions use the community forum.

  • We are not able to reproduce the issue. We need to be able to recreate the conditions that trigger the issue so that we can pinpoint the cause. After that we create a test to make sure the issue is really fixed. Some issues can be triggered manually easily but are hard to trigger in a programmatic manner.

  • The issue is not clearly explained. Issue descriptions like: “It doesn’t work”, or “It showed an error but I forgot to write it down” are almost impossible to resolve.

  • We understand the cause of the problem but don’t yet a solution to implement. We have studied the issue and have been able to reproduce it, but have not reached a consensus on how it should be fixed. Could be that the solution is beyond the collective expertise of the development team or that a design decision of big impact is needed before code changes can be implemented.

  • The issue is no real. The issue might be for an obsolete version. It could be for a fork or a program that is not developed by us.

I submitted a merge request and has not been merged

Merge requests must follow the development standards of the code as close a possible. They must also be atomic and as small as possible. The code must also not change the behavior of the project. We can’t accept merge request that customize it in some way based on your own preferences or needs.

Distribution

Sale

Can I sell Mayan EDMS as is or under another name?

Yes, selling Mayan EDMS is permitted. However, the copyright notice must remain intact. If you use an alternate name, a notice indicating that yours is a derived product from Mayan EDMS must be included. You must indicate to your clients that their act of purchasing Mayan EDMS from you is an independent action and in no way legally binds Mayan EDMS LLC, the Mayan EDMS copyright holder, or the core team in any way. Note that when you sell Mayan EDMS, you are selling your service and not a license, rights, or privileges of any type.

Can I get exclusive distribution rights for my region?

No, the terms of the license make the project freely available to everyone. Restricting distribution or sale would conflict with the license terms. This would possible for a commercial version of Mayan EDMS with separate licensing terms.

Is there a commercial partnership program?

There was at one time but was retired. If there is interest it could be reinstated in the future.

Other

What is an EDMS?

EDMS stands for Electronic Document Management System and it is an more modern version of a DMS. A DMS is a Document Management System. A system to store, sort, and categorize printed documents. It is an electronic filing system. Besides images of scanned documents, an EDMS also support electronic documents, documents created in a computer that may or may not have been printed. While they may look similar, EDMS/DMS is not to be confused with CMS (Content Management System), IM (Information Management), KM (Knowledge Management), RM (Record management), ECM (Enterprise Content Management). Mayan EDMS started initially as a strict EDMS project but has been expanding its feature set and provide some functionality from other system types.

Technical

Database managers

PostgreSQL vs. MySQL

Since Django abstracts database operations from a functional point of view Mayan EDMS will behave exactly the same either way. The only concern would be that MySQL doesn’t support transactions for schema modifying commands. The only moment this could cause problems is when running South migrations during upgrades, if a migration fails the database structure is left in a transitory state and has to be reverted manually before trying again.

LDAP

How to do LDAP authentication

A sample settings file called ldap_connection_settings.py is included in the contrib/settings/ folder of the repository showing how to setup LDAP authentication. This file can be found on the web at: https://gitlab.com/mayan-edms/mayan-edms/blob/master/contrib/settings/ldap_connection_settings.py. This is a community contributed file. Use the Python settings file method to use this file.

Python

Is virtualenv required as specified in the documentation?

It is not necessary, but it’s a strong recommendation mainly to reduce dependency conflicts by isolation from the main Python system install. If not using a virtualenv, pip would install Mayan’s dependencies globally coming in conflict with the distribution’s prepackaged Python libraries messing other Django projects or Python programs, or another later Python/Django project dependencies coming into conflict causing Mayan to stop working for no apparent reason.

Security

I found a security issue

Open an issue at https://gitlab.com/mayan-edms/mayan-edms/issues/ and mark it as Confidential. Allow us at least 48 hours to find and release a fix for the issue before submitting it to the CVE database.

I want to contact the team directly to report a security issue

The contact method is via email info@mayan-edms.com. Send the complete procedure to recreate the security issue.

Are security bounties available?

As a free and open source project, bounties or prices for security issues are not available.

Blackmail, extortion, or paid registrations as requirement for security issue disclosure will be reported to the pertinent managing or legal authorities.