Red Hat, Exadel partner for web development tools

The Linux world is changing. With major players like Microsoft and Oracle moving in on the open-source enterprise software market, smaller players like Red Hat and Canonical may be forced to find ways to distinguish themselves in a market that's only going to get more crowded. Linux distributor Red Hat has traditionally seen a large share of its revenue coming from its support offerings and to that end, the company is making an effort to branch out into new service areas, starting with developer tools. The company has announced a partnership with Exadel, which develops tools that allow developers to create the front-end for dynamic web applications and services. As part of the deal, Exadel will open-source its web-development tools at Red Hat project site JBoss.org. In turn, Red Hat will take over the technical direction of those open-source projects and will tie them into its own JBoss open-source server product. "What you'll see through this announcement is that we will be bringing a lot more to the table in terms of offerings to developers," said Bryan Che, product manager at Red Hat. Red Hat aims to offer support and distribution services to developers while encouraging programmers to use JBoss Java Application Server.

For more on the partnership:
- see this CNET article