Just in time for the launch of openSUSE 11.1, Novell developers have completed the new Contrib-Repository. The Contrib will act as a bridge between factory (packages officially supported by Novell) and third party packages.

Free Linux distro Debian has been working steadily on its next version 5.0 of the OS, known as Lenny. Now developers have been called in for a vote to determine the course of its general release.

The nonprofit LinuxFund.org is providing financial support for Gnash, the Flash alternative, to accelerate development of the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP).

This year's release of version 1.0 of the free runtime environment Wine is a milestone in itself. Developer Maarten Lankhorst has set another (experimental) stepping stone by getting the first 64Bit Windows program to run.

Thunderbird is nearing its premiere. Not too much is new, but there are many changes. The first beta of the free mail client provides a faster search and better IMAP integration. Creating email accounts and managing addresses and the calendar should be more intuitive.

The second beta of Firefox 3.1 has arrived with a new JavaScript engine, data security mode and web worker threads.

The Creative Commons Attribution License should already be familiar to many Internet users. Now the Science Commons license should revolutionize the exchange of scientific research.

The FTP team at the Debian project have decided that the Affero GPL version 3 licensing (AGPLv3) is consistent enough with the guidelines of the Linux distro that software with the licensing can go into Debian's main archive.