Ruby open source ecosystem to be built up by FiveRuns - Open Source Software Up the Stack

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March 06, 2008
Ruby open source ecosystem to be built up by FiveRuns

I met with Todd Barr March 5 to congratulate him on his new position at the Austin-based Ruby/Ruby on Rails-based venture called FiveRuns and to see if he’s nailed down any plans yet. Personally, being based in Austin is a coming home to Texas for Todd who worked for Dell Ventures Group before his six years at Red Hat.

Since he just joined FiveRuns in February I didn’t ask if the company name has something to do with a company softball game or… But whatever the linguistic background of its name, FiveRuns is a great example of a company making money (or more likely still planning to) on open source software (OSS). Unlike many OSS projects we cover, Ruby and Ruby on Rails are pure open source plays: Ruby providing a modern language (I dunno—a 6GL, I guess; remember I’m a deployment software guy not a development guy) and Rails providing a framework designed to run Ruby applications. The project came first (10 years ago for Ruby) and the need for service and product extensions followed.

Think Java vs. JEE (formerly J2EE). Just as Java and so forth need all kinds of other software around them to really get mission-critical attention in enterprise IT departments, Ruby and Rails needs applications beside and on top of it or else it’s just a useful academic exercise (think back to VA and Cygnus vis a vis Linux). Enter FiveRuns with a series of products and distributions to support the language and framework. Originally the company was a generic open source systems management offering (competing directly with HP, Tivoli, BMC, CA, Zenoss, Hyperic, and so forth) but realized that there was plenty of opportunity just with Ruby and friends.

Because its systems management software was originally generic, it was easy for FireRuns to tune the offering to Ruby and still have a good understanding of what was going on in the whole stack, from the networking to the database to the app server and up through the actual user applications.

If you are a Ruby developer or hoster, you probably already know these guys but if not, take a look. You have to look at the total ecosystem however and that’s where Todd comes in. He worked building the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) ecosystem at Red Hat and plans to do the same at FiveRuns. I have seen some blogosphere heat that FiveRuns is not itself open source but it meets my definition. It's new version is written in Ruby, uses Rails, distributes with BitRock and follows all their OSS-related license terms and conditions. Todd will work to eliminate any doubt that FiveRuns is a good citizen of the OSS community.

In the long run, FiveRuns doesn’t see itself so much competing with the generic systems management guys as being an extension that will better manage one specific set of (hopefully large in quantity) applications written in Ruby and running on the Rails framework. The Ruby ecosystem could very well become an OSS version of Progress (before all the acquisitions) or—pardon me guys—Visual Basic.