Based on the release policy of Ubuntu and its KDE derivative Kubuntu, the next version of Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) scheduled for mid January would be a Long Term Support (LTS) version with three years support. Now, Kubuntu's chief developer Jonathan Riddell has announced that there will not be an LTS version; instead Kubuntu is relying on the KDE 4 desktop update.

Today the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF), a non-profit organization created by the Software Freedom Law Center, signed an agreement with Microsoft to receive the protocol documentation needed to fully interoperate with the Microsoft Windows workgroup server products and to make them available to Free Software projects such as Samba.

Shortly after a revision of the current 5 branch of the Centos release, the Red Hat Enterprise source-based distribution has now updated the older release to version 4.6.

Apple developer Maciej Stachowiak has announced a new policy for developers of the HTML rendering library Webkit. It will close the gap between Apple developers and external programmers.

Red Hat today announced the global availability of JBoss Developer Studio, the first open source, Eclipse-based, integrated development environment combining tooling with runtime. JBoss Developer Studio provides a simple, powerful and easy-to-use solution for developers utilizing JBoss Enterprise Middleware. The solution provides a stable end-to-end, lifecycle environment for application development and deployment, enabling enterprises to respond more quickly and efficiently to rapidly changing business requirements.

Version 1.1 of Sun Microsystems' ODF Plugin for Microsoft’s Office suite now includes a multi-language package. A new version of the OpenXML-ODF Translator is now available for downloading from Sourceforge.

Debian project maintainers who just stop maintaining their software packages and fail to respond to mail are a big problem for the free Linux distribution. Now, Debian is introducing new rules to resolve the issue.