Open-source support firm grabs $4 million in VC

OpenLogic, a company that seeks to make it easier for customers to develop applications that employ open-source software, has completed a $4 million investment round.

The Series A financing came from Appian Ventures, Red Rock Ventures, Highway 12 Ventures and Village Ventures, the company said. It will be used to fund the development, sales, marketing and opening of new offices in and near its Broomfield, Colo., headquarters.

In addition, the company announced that Doug Barre, formerly Borland Software's chief operating officer, is now chairman. Rob Balgley, formerly Jabber's chief executive, is also a board member. And Greg Orzech, formerly VA Software's senior vice president of sales, is now OpenLogic's vice president of sales.

OpenLogic sells BlueGlue, software that helps customers build applications using open-source software packages such as Eclipse, Apache, MySQL, PHP and Tomcat.

The company is one of several new entrants in the open-source arena. Another is SpikeSource, which hopes that customers will pay for its open-source software updating and management services. But the popularity of open-source software doesn't ensure success: Linuxcare failed in a bid to sell support for open-source software.

[qazwiz]

Wrong direction

The money will just be spent on eye candy and lead them down the DOT COM trail.

They need to promote code developement instead of sales offices.... The money will come later from businesses that insist on support from the source. (call it the Red Hat model)