Novell supports Open Source in a big way

from internetnews.com bq. Officials at the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) have filled the group's last board of director seat with the addition of Novell (Quote, Chart) Vice President Jeffrey Hawkins. bq. The independent software vendor (ISV) applied for "platinum-level" membership -- with $1 million a year dues -- within the organization last week, and got unanimous approval from the other directors Friday. bq. Novell's inclusion was apparently helped by its recent decision to acquire Gemany-based SuSE Linux, though officials from both sides hastened to say that the membership was completely independent of the purchase. bq. "It's not conditional in any way to our deal with SuSE," said Bruce Lowery, a Novell spokesperson. bq. Last month the San Jose, Calif., company announced its intentions to acquire Germany-based SuSE Linux for $210 million, the latest step in Novell's strategy to embrace open source. SuSE is one of the top three commercial distributions (RedHat and Mandrake) and it's a good one. It will be nice to see a convergence of Novell's security and management tools and the performance and open source of the Linux kernal. OSDL has a press-release here