> Will a user, government program, or support contract incur any costs, other
than their own labor, for installing and using Big Bang?
Big Bang itself is open-source, and you do not need to pay Platform One
to use it in your environment.
Our baseline includes multiple software components, with a variety
of open-source and commercial licenses. Details of these components and
their licensing models can be found in
[Big Bang Licensing Model Overview](./understanding-bigbang/licensing-model.md)
In Big Bang 2.0, our default core components will be open source, though paid
alternatives will remain available.
You are in complete control over which components you install in your
environment, and choose whether or not to use commercial software.
However, your Approving Official may require certain commercial applications for a cATO.
> Are users required to set up a "contract" with Platform One in order to
use Big Bang?
No. Big Bang is open source, and can be used by you and your organization
without payment to Platform One.
Platform One does offer optional hosting and support contracts:
- Our Big Bang Integration Team helps customers install, upgrade, and operate BigBang on customer hardware and in customer environments.
- Our Digital Twin service will deploy an instance of your application to
our testing clusters, so we can ensure that changes to our baseline won't break your integration tests. Providing you with customized release notes for your environment.
-[Party Bus](https://p1.dso.mil/products/party-bus) is a managed environment and
instance of Big Bang, which an application can be hosted on. Party Bus removes the
need for you to operate a cluster entirely.
For more information on services, [contact us](https://p1.dso.mil/contact-us) or email platformone@dso.mil
> Do we need a government PM to send a formal request to Platform One in order
to get started?
No. Big Bang is Open Source, and you do not need our permission to use it.
However, we always like to hear from our users, both to know how large an
impact this effort is making, and to make sure we are addressing our users'
@@ -65,3 +65,7 @@ The following is a general overview of the process, the [deployment guides](./gu
## New User Orientation
* New users are encouraged to read through the Useful Background Contextual Information present in the [understanding-bigbang folder](./understanding-bigbang)
## Frequently Asked Questions
You can view answers to a number of frequently asked questions [here](FAQ.md).