By Stephen Shankland
Friday, January 06 2006 09:36 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39303156,00.htm

Novell plans to release tools early this year to let outside programmers help with its OpenSuse version of Linux, the company said Friday.

The company announced the OpenSuse project in August as a way to draw more attention and involvement to its Linux products. The move closely parallels the way Red Hat, the top Linux seller, has created its Fedora version of Linux.

OpenSuse and Fedora are free; the companies sell support subscriptions for their premium products, Suse Linux Enterprise Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. OpenSuse has an important role in Novell's financial turnaround plan, which depends in part upon elevating the profile of its Linux products.

Early in 2006, Novell plans to release a "development framework" that will let outside contributors or third-party software developers contribute software or patches. The framework also will include a publicly available server that any registered developer can use to to build software, Novell said.

Since the OpenSuse.org site was launched, there have been 750,000 verified installations of Suse Linux, Novell said.