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Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure you and your parent understand what an SLA means. It's an agreement that, when broken, incurs a penalty.

They aren't saying they guarantee 100% uptime. They're saying they'll pay you for any downtime. It's literally the 3rd paragraph:

> 1.2 Penalties. If the Service fails to meet the above service level, the Customer will receive a credit equal to the result of the Service Credit calculation in Section 6 of this SLA.

(Most people I know consider them meaningless marketing BS that's really just meant to trick people or satisfy some make-work checkbox)

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> They aren't saying they guarantee 100% uptime

> Cloudflare ("Company") commits to provide a level of service for Business Customers demonstrating: [...] 100% Uptime. The Service will serve Customer Content 100% of the time without qualification.

This is a legal commitment to provide 100% uptime. They are guaranteeing 100% uptime and defining penalties for failing to meet that guarantee. The fact that a penalty is defined does not stop it from being a guarantee.

Looks like it supports parent opinion: commit - bind to a certain course if policy. It's legal obligation, not a statement about guarantees in physical world (like "this alloy won't melt below t°C")

No, this SLA is a legal commitment to give you credits when Service uptime falls below a certain threshold. The threshold could be anything - 99%, 50%, 100%, etc. Importantly, Cloudflare is not under a legal obligation to provide the Service at or above the agreed threshold, it's under a legal obligation to give you Credits when the Service uptime is below that threshold.

"Service Credits are Customer’s sole and exclusive remedy for any violation of this SLA."

> This is a legal commitment to provide 100% uptime. They are guaranteeing 100% uptime

I don't think you know what a guarantee is.

For example when you buy a new car you get a guarantee that it won't break down. Are they claiming it won't break down? No, of course not. What a guarantee means is that they'll fix it or compensate you if it does.

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