"Adios, amigovell!"

SOME GOOD NEWS, finally! Readers may remember rPath, which despite its roots in Red Hat (that Novell attacks), decided to line up with SUSE and Novell. This seemed to have come after failures in negotiation with companies like Red Hat and, either way, it seemed unfortunate at the time because of Microsoft 'patent tax' that accompanies SUSE.

Well, despite a cold shoulder from Red Hat, rPath seems to have found open doors in two separate distributions that are distant from Novell. It's Ubuntu, which is Debian based and CentOS, which is the next best thing to Red Hat (bar the trademarks). Here is the press release.

rPath today announced support for the Ubuntu and CentOS Linux operating systems as part of rBuilder and the rPath Lifecycle Management Platform. rBuilder is the category-defining build and release management system for creating virtual appliances and application images. The rPath Lifecycle Management Platform extends rBuilder with a comprehensive system for controlling the cost, complexity and risk of deploying, managing and maintaining application images in virtualized and cloud-baCentOSsed environments

There is also a short article about this.

Ubuntu and CentOS are now in the rPath. The company yesterday began shipping a version of its rBuilder build and release management system for Linux that adds those distros; the tool previously worked only with Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise and its own rPath Linux.

[...]

The company was founded in 2006 by former Red Hat VPs Billy Marshall (sales) and Erik Troan (engineering).

The concern that Microsoft and Novell would leverage rPath to their advantage in virtualisation [1, 2] is a tad less likely to materialise now. ⬆