“Last July, Novell and AOR PAN Communications launched The
Dister Awards, a contest to drive the Linux developer community and
independent software vendors to use the SUSE tools to build and
share appliances.
“This approach,” says Ian Bruce, Novell’s director of global PR and
analyst relations, “differentiates us in a crowded market. The
number of appliances built, downloaded, and placed on the gallery
site, and the number of independent software vendors that got
involved would all translate to sales leads.”