Microsoft has contributed code to the Linux kernel.
Such a statement has been made before, always under an "April 1" dateline or tagged as "humor." But neither of those conditions are the case today. The statement is completely true, and the relationship between Microsoft and Linux will never be the same again.
The news came with little media advance work, showing up as a press release on Microsoft's site today as they made the announcement on the opening day of OSCON. The impact, as one would expect, was huge.
In order to provide better support for Linux as a guest OS for Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization app, Microsoft is contributing 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux kernel under the GPL v2 license. The code has been submitted for inclusion to the main Linux kernel source tree.
Microsoft sees this as a step towards better interoperability with customers on its virtualization platform, which they hope will be seen as a stronger offering now that Linux should become a more efficient guest OS on Hyper-V.
“Our initial goal in developing the (Linux driver) code was to enable Linux to run as a virtual machine on top of Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor and implementation of virtualization," Tom Hanrahan, head of Microsoft's Open Source Technology Center stated in Microsoft's announcement, “The Linux device drivers we are releasing are designed so Linux can run in enlightened mode, giving it the same optimized synthetic devices as a Windows virtual machine running on top of Hyper-V. Without this driver code, Linux can run on top of Windows, but without the same high performance levels. We worked very closely with the Hyper-V team at Microsoft to make that happen.”
One of the architects of the code submission is Linux kernel programmer Greg Kroah-Hartman, who has been working with Microsoft's developers through the Linux Driver Project, which Kroah-Hartman leads.
On his Linux Kernel mailing list announcement today, Kroah-Hartman also explained the purpose of the release:
"These drivers are to enable Linux to work better when running as a guest on top of the Hyper-V system. There is still a lot of work to do in getting this into "proper" mergable state, and moving it out of the staging directory, but Hank [Janssen] and I will be undertaking this task," he wrote.
Kroah-Hartman acknowledged the work done by Microsoft as well as by Novell, which sponsors his work on the Linux Driver Project.
This event marks the first time Microsoft has submitted code to the Linux kernel, and the first major code release they have made under the GPL (that wasn't under GPL already).
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written by Jesper Nee, July 20, 2009
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written by Josip, July 20, 2009
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written by Adam Gignac, July 20, 2009
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written by Christian Duquesne, July 21, 2009
I hope it will stay optional, considering the "fairness" of this company in the past, I cn't help bust mistrust them...
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written by AZorin, July 21, 2009
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written by Omaha, July 21, 2009
At present Microsoft is the Puppetmaster, Novell is the ventriliquist puppet, and Gnome is the scene. Novell needs the Microsoft cash, Gnome needs Novell.
General acceptance of Mono is achieved by Banshee and Tomboy. That establishes Mono in the consumer's preferred distro such as Ubuntu.
A takeover of Novell will presently be counterproductive. If not, it would have happened long time ago. As soon as Microsoft deems it safe (i.e by sufficient mono penetreation), and they feel they are edible by sufficient numbers amongst OpenSource communities+++ they will carry out the kill.
They will either continue to use Novell to break doors, or they will kill Novell and any part of it that is not secured by licenses.
My bet is 2012.
Novell blogs would probably fit better within the Microsoft blogosphere than amongst the Gnu/Linux/OpenSource..
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written by Andrea Benini, July 21, 2009
Their strategy was always : "embrace, extend, extinguish"
They'll embrace opensource, invest in interoperability, purchase companies and technology (Novell for example)
They'll extend opensource drivers and access, custom code patches, custom os interoperability, custom acess for certain OSes (so they can cut OpenSource movement: Debian, Gentoo, Slack, free projects and so on
They'll extinguish opensource by ceasing support to unwelcomed drivers, kernels and technology to semitate a mess on Linux community
They've always acted in this way, just read past Microsoft moves, see what happened to Apple in the '90s or IBM in the 80's; Linux is the new cancer (as Ballmer reported)
Take a look at this article (http://www.ecis.eu/documents/F...epaper.pdf), this is one of the best analisys I've ever seen on them
I hope they'll cease on these "benefits" or we'll run into troubles
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written by Gergely Máté, July 21, 2009
. But Linux is not a company, it's a free software project, so you can always have your personalised version compiled if you don't like something in it. Thus it's not the GPL'd code you should beware of. I think these news are good news, because Microsoft's behaviour may serve as an example to hardware vendors that used to provide at most restricted drivers. The message is clear. Hardware vendors: contribute!
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written by lakshmipathi, July 21, 2009
Most virtualization runs with Linux.Now M$ wants spread their Virtualization technique with the help of Linux?
We have better virtualization technologies(xen,kvm etc) other than Hyper-V though.
Why not open up M$ office and support ODF file formats
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written by Rob Day, July 23, 2009
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