When we started Blue Gecko, we relied heavily on free, open-source software because:

• as a startup we couldn't afford most commercial solutions, and
  
• well, mostly we chose not to afford most commercial solutions.

Fortunately, there is a lot of good open-source software out there.  For example, we adopted Nagios as a monitoring framework not only because it was freely available, but because the monitoring framework was so technology agnostic: We could write a plug-in to do anything we wanted and as long as we followed the API, we could monitor anything in a nice, clean, consistent manner.

We wrote a lot of monitors and other tools to support our growing business and at this point, we feel one product is polished and road-tested enough to give back to the community that so generously helped us grow.

We sincerely hope that this first tool, Monocle will allow DBAs and System Administrators to better monitor and extend monitoring for their Oracle databases without paying exorbitant fees or installing software they don't want.

Check out our start in the community open-source Oracle monitoring.