Microsoft coding parts of Linux!! Yes..Linux!!
You may have already heard, but the unthinkable has happened. That’s right, Microsoft, the self-proclaimed enemy of Linux and free software, has announced that they will be submitting some 20,000 lines of code to the Linux kernel. Come again? Yes, Microsoft wants to get its code into the Linux kernel. You read that right!
It is important to note that this code has not yet been included into the official Linux kernel. The code has also not yet been thoroughly scrutinized by the wider community to see what the code actually consists of. Is it all code, or does it rely on binary blobs? Will the quality of the code make the grade, or will the community be expected to clean it up and maintain it?
When approached by Linux Magazine as to whether he has even looked at the code, Linus Torvalds (the father of Linux) replied:
“I haven’t. Mainly because I’m not personally all that interested in driver code (it doesn’t affect anything else), especially when I wouldn’t use it myself.
So for things like that, I just trust the maintainers. I tend to look at code when bugs happen, or when it crosses multiple subsystems, or when it’s one of the core subsystems that I’m actively involved in (ie things like VM, core device resource handling, basic kernel code etc).
I’ll likely look at it when the code is actually submitted to me by the maintainers (Greg [Kroah-Hartman], in this case), just out of morbid curiosity.”
So why the patch? Well, it contains three drivers which will enhance the performance of Linux when virtualized as a guest under Microsoft’s virtualization product, Hyper-V. Ahh, now the truth starts to emerge. The purpose of the code has nothing to do with being generous, but rather it is to ensure that Linux will run well under their own virtualization technology. Microsoft has well realized that the world is moving towards free software and that users are implementing Linux in their infrastructure.
Even though the motivation is a purely selfish one, is there anything wrong with that? Microsoft certainly plans to “outsmart open source” and this move should be seen in that light, but at the end of the day they are doing the unthinkable - contributing to free software - and that’s a win.
