Skype (the famous Voice-Over-IP communication program) will be released under an open source license. The story started when Olivier FAURAX sent an email requesting Mandriva version of Skype.

After a little chat with customer support , he got this reply. Customer support said that Skype understood that many users complain that there is no Mandriva version at present.

Skype was happy to be able to inform you that Skype will from now on be part of the open source community.

Skype mentioned that therefore Linux developers will be enabled to influence the development of the Skype client for Linux – which will most certainly result in specific versions for the different distributions.”

This step will boost adopting Skype as the best communication program in GNU/Linux distributions.

Skype answered in an email that the appreciate the user community’s enthusiasm and realizeed this is something they have been wanting for a while. They realized the potential of the open source community and believed that making Skype for Linux an open source application will help to speed up its development and enhance its compatibility with different versions of Linux.