Commercial Haskell users today rely on a substantial set of core open-source projects and community infrastructure as part of the vibrant Haskell ecosystem. Open-source projects such as GHC, Cabal and Haskell Language Server serve as the technical foundation of the ecosystem. The Haskell Foundation acts as an organising and coordinating body to empower the community. Both individual open-source projects and the Haskell Foundation have historically relied on a combination of volunteer effort and commercial sponsorship.
Well-Typed’s Haskell Ecosystem Support Packages provide commercial users with access to Well-Typed’s experts while investing in the Haskell community and its technical ecosystem. Clients purchasing these packages are:
- Gaining access to Well-Typed’s team of Haskell experts for technical support with their use of Haskell
- Investing in developer time for essential open-source maintenance work undertaken by Well-Typed on GHC, Cabal, HLS and other core tools, including release management, responding to bugs and security issues, performance improvements, code review for open-source contributions, and much more
- Supporting the Haskell Foundation’s mission to build up the wider Haskell community
Whether it is help diagnosing difficult bugs, understanding performance, resolving tooling issues, or advice with testing, Well-Typed’s expertise has helped many companies get the most out of the Haskell toolchain. Depending upon their chosen tier of support, clients have regular contact with Well-Typed engineers to discuss their Haskell issues, design considerations, performance concerns, and tooling questions. Higher tier support contracts also include a budget of dedicated engineering time to address the client’s specific needs.
Why Well-Typed?
Well-Typed has a long history of developing and stewarding critical portions of the Haskell toolchain, ever since its founding in 2008. This includes:
- over a decade of experience maintaining GHC, including managing releases, fixing bugs and developing major features such as the low-latency garbage collector;
- managing Haskell Language Server releases, improving performance and working towards robust multiple component support;
- significant contributions to the Cabal build system and cabal-install, addressing long-standing architectural issues such as Nix-style builds and replacing Custom setup scripts;
- contributions to Hackage packaging infrastructure reliability and supply chain security;
- development of observability, profiling and debugging tools for Haskell (
threadscope,ghc-debug,eventlog2html, DWARF info, late cost centers, eras profiling) and application of those tools to significantly improve performance for GHC, Cabal, HLS and Haddock; - many other open-source contributions including libraries such as
generics-sop,opticsandserialise.
Our team of experts includes maintainers and core contributors for:
- GHC: Ben Gamari, Matthew Pickering, Andreas Klebinger, Zubin Duggal, Sam Derbyshire, Rodrigo Mesquita
- HLS: Zubin Duggal, Hannes Siebenhandl, Matthew Pickering
- Cabal: Duncan Coutts, Mikolaj Konarski, Matthew Pickering, Sam Derbyshire, Rodrigo Mesquita
- ghc-debug and other performance tooling: Matthew Pickering, Zubin Duggal
- GHC Steering Committee: Adam Gundry
We are actively responsible for release management for GHC and HLS, and support Cabal releases in collaboration with the wider Cabal maintainer team. Of course, these are large projects with many core developers and contributors, with whom we work in partnership.
In addition to our open-source work, Well-Typed supports a wide range of commercial clients with Haskell consultancy, software development and training.
Why the Haskell Foundation?
The Haskell Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to broadening the adoption of Haskell, by supporting its ecosystem of tools, libraries, education, and research. This includes vital work in a range of areas:
- Building up the Haskell community, coordinating and empowering volunteers to contribute
- Cross-project coordination to solve issues that span multiple projects, thereby improving the developer experience
- Identifying and addressing gaps in the technical ecosystem
- Hosting infrastructure such as Hackage, Stackage, and CI for Haskell projects
- Addressing ecosystem-wide challenges such as responding to security and stability issues
- Organising community events such as the GHC Contributors Workshop and Haskell Ecosystem Workshop
- Developing certifications, standards and best practice recommendations
- Improving documentation by stimulating the production of books, teaching materials and other resources such as the Haskell Error Index
The Haskell Foundation’s role is to foster collaboration and improve coordination across the wider Haskell community. This complements the technical work Well-Typed is doing to develop and maintain the core toolchain. Thus our Haskell Ecosystem Support Packages include significant donations to the Haskell Foundation.
Well-Typed have been strong supporters of the Haskell Foundation since its inception, both through direct sponsorship and through volunteering our time and expertise. Andres Löh from Well-Typed is currently serving as Chair of the HF Board of Directors. However, these packages are a commercial offering from Well-Typed, independently from the Haskell Foundation.
Support Tiers
Well-Typed offers multiple support tiers to match the diverse needs and capacities of Haskell’s commercial users, and we are happy to vary any of these packages to meet specific needs or budgets. Packages are invoiced monthly or annually in advance, with a significant discount for an annual commitment:
| Tier | Bronze | Silver | Gold | Platinum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open-source maintenance for core Haskell toolchain | ✅ | ✅✅ | ✅✅✅ | ✅✅✅✅ |
| Support for Haskell Foundation | ✅ | ✅✅ | ✅✅✅ | ✅✅✅✅ |
| Engineering meetings | Quarterly | Monthly | Fortnightly | Weekly |
| Technical support channel | - | Chat | Chat | |
| Developer time included | 10 hours/month | 1/5 FTE | 1/2 FTE | 1 FTE |
| Time reserved for private support or development | - | 4 hours/month | 16 hours/month | 40 hours/month |
| Publicity | Name | Small logo + link | Medium logo + link | Large logo + link |
| Monthly billing (ex VAT) | $1,500 | $3,850 | $11,000 | $27,500 |
| Annual billing (ex VAT) | $16,500 | $42,000 | $120,000 | $300,000 |
20% of the purchase price will be donated to Haskell.org for the Haskell Foundation.
Bronze
- Funds cover Well-Typed engineering time maintaining open source projects such as GHC, HLS, Cabal and others, with the specific tasks determined by Well-Typed and the open-source project maintainers
- Help ensure the sustainability of the Haskell community and infrastructure by raising funds for the Haskell Foundation
- Quarterly meeting with Well-Typed engineers to discuss Haskell ecosystem needs and priorities
- Optional acknowledgment as a Bronze Haskell Ecosystem Supporter in Well-Typed’s public communications (name only, without logo or link)
Silver
- Monthly meeting with Well-Typed engineers to discuss your use of Haskell and provide input into issue prioritization
- Access to occasional advice and support with your private issues from Well-Typed engineers by email (up to 4 hours/month included in package)
- More time spent on open-source project maintenance and development
- More funds raised for the Haskell Foundation
- Optional acknowledgment as a Silver Haskell Ecosystem Supporter in Well-Typed’s public communications (with small logo and link)
Gold
- Fortnightly meeting with Well-Typed engineers to provide regular opportunities for collaboration
- Direct access to support from Well-Typed engineers through asynchronous messaging (e.g. Mattermost, Slack)
- Dedicated engineering time to address your private issues with open-source ecosystem (up to 16 hours/month included in package)
- Even more time spent on open-source project maintenance and development (up to ½ FTE included)
- Optional acknowledgment as a Gold Haskell Ecosystem Supporter in Well-Typed’s public communications (with medium logo and link)
Platinum
- Weekly meeting with Well-Typed engineers to provide regular opportunities for collaboration
- Includes direct contributions to private codebases (covered by NDA and license agreement)
- Substantial time spent on open-source project maintenance (up to 1 FTE included)
- Additional dedicated enginering time to address your issues with open-source ecosystem or private codebase (up to 40 hours/month included in package)
- Optional acknowledgment as a Platinum Haskell Ecosystem Supporter in Well-Typed’s public communications (with large logo and link)
Alternatives
Commercial consulting from Well-Typed
Well-Typed are happy to take on Haskell training, consulting and software development projects on a normal commercial basis. This includes proprietary software developoment, but also projects where the client would like to fund development of specific improvements to the Haskell ecosystem.
We invest a proportion of our commercial income into open-source maintenance and supporting the Haskell community as sponsors of the Haskell Foundation in our own right.
Donations to the Haskell Foundation
For individuals who wish to support the Haskell community, or businesses who do not wish to purchase a Haskell Ecosystem Support package, we encourage donating directly to the Haskell Foundation. As a not-for-profit entity in the US, donations to the Haskell Foundation may have tax advantages in some cases.
Next steps
Please contact info@well-typed.com if you would like more information about any of these options, or would like to arrange a no-obligation initial call.