Red Hat has launched its Red Hat Exchange online market place for business applications. 

The service offers 14 open source business applications including MySQL, SugarCRM and Zimbra. They are sold as a subscription service and Red Hat will provide support. 

"Red Hat Exchange demonstrates a core Red Hat belief in the inevitable expansion of open source," Matt Mattox, director of Red Hat Exchange, said at the official unveiling at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego.

"Not many of our competitors in the proprietary world can claim to be an honest broker in the application space. But we are taking the long view here. We see this as an investment in a rising tide with greater opportunity for the ecosystem."

The service allows third-party software applications to 'piggyback' on Red Hat's brand and customer base. Mattox described it as a "shortlist of business solutions".

Borrowing from traditional e-commerce stores, users can rate and leave feedback about the applications in the service.

Red Hat Exchange can also push sales of Red Hat software. The Alfresco open source enterprise content management system, for instance, could drive sales of the JBoss portal server, Mattox suggested.

Red Hat first announced the service in March.