The Open Build Service (OBS) is a system that lets developers build and distribute binary packages from different sources in a consistent, automatic way. It was formerly called openSUSE Build Service, and was designed to encourage developers to compile packages that would work on multiple Linux distros including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, Debian and more.
It vastly simplifies the build process making it easy for a developer to package their program for many distros, and make these packages available to users regardless of their choice of distro. It also supports the building of products and appliances. Developers can run OBS as a private installation or use a public instance like the openSUSE Build Service.
OBS is free software licensed under GPL The Linux Foundation is planning to add it to the Linux Developer Network, and the MeeGo project and Tizen use it to develop their distros. The public openSUSE Build Service is used to develop the openSUSE distro and to offer packages from the same source to other distros including Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and SUSE Linux Enterprise.