Looking to spread the usage of the AppArmour application security software it acquired when it bought Immunix, Novell announced last week that it would release the software's source code under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and sponsor a project to maintain and improve it.

Novell will sell support service subscriptions to companies and users of AppArmour. Frank Rego, product manager for platform security at Novell, said AppArmour was the primary motivation behind Novell's purchase of Immunix last May. The software is also included with Novell's openSUSE 10.0 Linux distribution.

AppArmour is a Linux security framework designed to protect applications from being exploited by an attacker. It does this by profiling applications on a system, looking at which users need them, and applying the principle of least privilege to applications, according to the project's detail page. AppArmour scans a single machine, or an entire network, for individual open ports, generating security reports on individual pieces of the system, explained Crispin Cowan, director of software engineering at Novell and the former chief technology officer for Immunix.

According to Cowan, Novell is releasing AppArmour under the GPL to put the software in the hands of more users and developers, a problem he said Immunix had when the software was proprietary.

The link for this article located at NewsForge is no longer available.