BlueGlue is closed source defense for open source shops

Thats what OpenLogic thinks because they released Version 3.1 of a product called BlueGlue. (They also got $4 million in venture capital.) Vice president-marketing Andy Grolnick gave me the BlueGlue line.

'There's a lot of pain in managing open source. When you get beyond Linux there's not a lot of help. We make it easy, safe and manageable.

'BlueGlue gives you intelligent distribution of 100 top products beyond Linux, handling the installation and integration of all these.' You can compare it to the single-vendor management tools sold by such companies as Microsoft and Oracle, he said.

'If you try to do it in the open source world the products aren't commercial-grade, and you have to go to many places to pull together a development environment combining the tools. Our management tool is not open source, but we work with all the open source projects.'

But what of the cost? 'It's $399 per year per system. The proprietary equivalents cost thousands. A five person team will pay $2,000, one license for the server and one for each client.' And, of course, 'You can't see the source on this tool.'

One more point. 'It runs on Linux and Windows today. Some 80% of developers are working on Windows clients. Our software runs the same on both.'

So, what do you think? Should enterprises depend on closed source to manage open source, or do you know of a great open source alternative?

Let us know in TalkBack.