Novell developer tool embraces main rival
Novell's OpenSuse Build Service now can be used to test software for Red Hat Linux.
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Novell has endowed its OpenSuse Build Service with the ability to produce software for its main rival, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and a clone called CentOS, the company said Thursday.
The build system was originally established so programmers could make sure their software works on new versions of Novell's Suse Linux products. The build system already worked with two other Linux distributions, and Ubuntu.
Why the largesse from Novell?
My guess is that the company hopes to tow more open-source developers into its orbit, but there are altruistic motives as well: "By adding support to build packages for CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the OpenSuse Build Service makes it even easier to build packages across multiple Linux distributions, thus further enabling innovative ideas to spread quickly throughout the free and open source software community," said Michael Loeffler, Novell's OpenSuse product manager, in a statement.