Novell is beefing up its Linux play with the cash acquisition of Ximian. The company has confirmed that it will continue to support Ximian-sponsored Mono and GNOME open source projects.

Mono, Spanish for Monkey, is, we guess, the more visionary, of the two. This will enable Linux developers to create and deploy .NET apps on Linux in languages other than C#.

Ximian's totemic open source developers (and co-founders), Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman, will continue to do their same jobs wearing Novell hats.

Ximian also has some real live products to call its own, notably Ximian Red Carpet, a centralised software management technology. Overtime, Red Carpet is to be tightly integrated into Novell ZenWork, Novell says.

Post-acquisition, Ximian is to be called the "Novell Ximian Services business unit at Novell". Surely this is one Novell too many? ®

Ximian press release