Network software vendor Novell, in a bid to gain market and mind share, has started up a
Novell Forge? Now where did they get that name?
At the moment Novell Forge already has 136 projects going, One of them, Novell’s Nsure UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) Server, is being released, along with its source code, under the BSD license, meaning other vendors can use the code in for-profit products.
UDDI is a relatively new kind of software. It’s a software specification that lets developers find and use Web services. UDDI specifies a registry of Web services coded in XML, a protocol for accessing the information in the registry, and a set of APIs for using the protocol programmatically.
Nsure is even newer than UDDI, having debuted just last December. It adheres to the UDDI specification, and adds a layer of security for identity management. Nsure uses Novell’s eDirectory, formerly known as NetWare Directory Services, as its repository.
Opening the source for Nsure is in character for Novell. The company has contributed to open source projects in the past, and the forthcoming version of its flagship product, NetWare 6.5, includes open source applications like Apache and MySQL.
This week’s announcement is no milestone for open source, but it is another indication that even commercial software vendors realize that open source development can strengthen their products.
NewsForge will have a full report on open source activities at BrainShare after the conference wraps up.
Category:
- Open Source
