Puppet was written in Ruby and uses a declarative Ruby-like Domain-Specific Language (DSL) in its command-line environment (pure Ruby support has since been discontinued). Similarly, Puppet Enterprise comes with additional features and official support from Puppet Labs that is absent in the free, open source version. According to Chef, it does not market an open source version of their solution, since “there is only one completely free, fully Open Source, Chef Server.” Fair enough, though features like the management console and replication features are available at a premium only (or severely limited). It does, in fact-though it might not be readily apparent or referred to as such. “Chef has a free open source version of its product?” Take Open Source Puppet's arch nemesis/counterpart Open Source Chef as a representative example. Ultimately it comes down to how the vendor chooses to strategically package up its solution. Typically, core functionality comes standard-with other premium features available for purchase (e.g., freemium).

So while open source equates to software freedom, it does not necessarily mean free of cost. Their source code is openly modifiable and redistributable, giving organizations the flexibility to modify the software to fit unique requirements. Open Source ≠ Freeįirst, a note regarding open source software: most, if not all CM tools on the market are open source. Can free beat fee in this case? Let’s dig into the details to help inform your decision. But it comes in 2 flavors: a commercial enterprise product and a free open-source version.

So you’ve done your research and settled on Puppet as your configuration management (CM) and automation tool of choice.

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