Understanding Microsoft's Linux code shocker
Microsoft dropped a mini-bombshell on Monday, announcing that it is contributing thousands of lines of code for inclusion in Linux.
But lest anyone think Microsoft suffered a massive head trauma over the weekend, the code it is releasing isn't really about helping Linux compete better with Microsoft. The drivers are really geared at making Windows a better host for Linux.
"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," Tom Hanrahan, director of Microsoft's Open Source Technology Center, said in a statement. "Without this driver code, Linux can run on top of Windows, but without the same high performance levels."
As noted by CNET Blog Network writer Matt Asay, Microsoft is releasing three drivers for Linux under the GPL that governs Linux.
Although Microsoft has released open-source code in the past, the company has generally favored licenses other than the GPL. That said, the GPL is the way into the Linux kernel and Microsoft wants this code in Linux.
In an article on its press Web site, Microsoft acknowledged the departure. The company has also been going after Linux for years, both on the marketing and legal fronts.
"Today, in a break from the ordinary, Microsoft released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community," Microsoft said. "The code, which includes three Linux device drivers, has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree."
The move comes at a time of mixed signals from Redmond when it comes to Linux. Microsoft has said that the browser-based versions of Office, which are due out next year as part of Office 2010, will support Firefox, bringing at least a portion of Office to Linux for the first time.
It has also made peace with a number of Linux companies, most notably a 2006 pact with Novell, but has continued to rattle its legal saber at those with whom it has not struck patent deals.
After years of making claims that many Linux implementations violate Microsoft patents, Microsoft finally took a case to court in February, filing suit against navigation systems maker TomTom.
The two sides later settled, but the settlement left many unanswered questions and Microsoft hasn't said if it will take similar action against other companies.
Although the latest move is clearly designed to bolster Windows as a hosting environment for servers running both Linux and Windows, to me there is something slightly discordant about adding code to something you feel is already infringing on your intellectual property. Perhaps, though, that's just the very definition of co-opetition.
Microsoft is in an interesting position--seeking to compete with Linux while also understanding that many companies run both operating systems. Not only is it about making its business customers happy, but there is good money to be made by owning the management and virtualization layers, even if there is some Linux running atop Microsoft's stack.
For those that want to hear Microsoft's take on the news, here's a video of Hanrahan discussing the move with Sam Ramji, the company's senior director of platform strategy. (Note: Silverlight is required.)
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
Thing is, they'd never, ever release Hyper-V's core components as GPL, or, say, Sharepoint...
Well said.
Some of us are reluctant to blithely allow M$ any MORE access to our desktops via Silverlight or .NET
As apposed to Adobe Flash? Whats so wrong with Silverlight?
ZZZZZ....
What are you complaining about? I preffer Adobe to have some reason to improve their flash rather than only updating it...
Silverlight sucks and it only works with IE, never ever got it to work with FireFox on a PC, nor on Ubuntu or OSX, so that is called Browser Lock in."
@reva276--I don't know about all that. I am watching the video right now using 10.5.7 on a Macbookpro. Make sure you are up to date on your software. That is normally the cause.
And you say even worse then flash?? What is that supposed to mean?
"Silverlight is the best video on the web. Flash is way too processor intensive, has poor video quality, and the plug-in crashes every browser on the planet."
What lol??
Flash is too processor intensive?.. Flash is most of the time used in a server-side way, this means that the client-side doesn't have to use a lot of its processor / graphic-card power to run its content.. You probably can say that 90% of the performance depends on the server-side, not the client-side
Flash has poor video quality? What about streaming of hd-quality video??
The plug-in crashes every browser? I have IE, Fox and Chrome and they never crash (because of flash)
lol
Just my 2 cents
If you think windows is broken and patch heavy, you probably haven't used linux. I had to patch my linux box just as often as windows. That's the reality of computing- if an OS isn't being patched, then it's insecure and stagnent.
Workers aren't going to use linux as their business desktop. Again, we're talking servers and VMs here. They're running processes, jobs, performance tests, development environments, etc.. It isn't Mary in accounting working on a spreadsheet.
There's a diff between a Type 1(bare metal) and a Type 2 (hosted) hypervisor (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor) Funny thing is, the Type 1's still require some sort of OS or console to control it (the OS runs as a VM atop the hypervisor, instead of underneath).
Hyper-V has Windows as its control VM. VMWare ESXi has a tiny iLo-like console (it was built more to be controlled by a remote computer). Hyper-V requires roughly 2.5 GB of disk space just for itself (if you use Server 2008 Core only, otherwise it's ~10GB for the full version, Vista, or whatever), while ESXi uses something like 32MB total for itself. Not sure off the top of my head what ESX (not ESXi) eats, but it uses a stripped RedHat Linux distro to control it, so it sits somewhere at around 1GB max. :)
Long story short - if you want to run Hyper-V, you;re stuck with paying for a Windows license, and with installing Windows on it.
re: "Well, if the linux fanboys want to claim microsoft did it to somehow consolidate a position, I would agree"
That would, by extension and correlation, make you a "linux fanboy". That's the problem with gratuitous slanging... :)
re: "With the failure that was/is Vista, many people thought to themselves "I wish there was a better Operating System than this"...thusly, some people moved to either Mac's or tried out Linux."
Heh... they're not aiming for home users here, nor Linux. They're trying to get some sort of marketshare away from VMWare, and in the enterprise (though until they get something approximating VMotion, and get some actual and decent VM handling, I doubt they'll get very far...)
As a user of open source on the desktop (Linux and BSDs of various types, currently Ubuntu), I chose to use Linux but don't expect the entire world to line up behind it anytime soon.
With that in mind, Microsoft would do well to get a little more friendly, do a lot less threatening and suing and pursue projects like making the online version of Office work with Firefox (and therefore Linux). I hope it doesn't require .NET and Silverlight ... but that's another topic for another day.
There's going to be a lot of pressure on Microsoft over the next few years on both the OS, application, server and cloud fronts. A Microsoft that seeks to interoperate with Linux would be a smarter Microsoft.
But there's also a second, perhaps stronger community to establish linux in the enterprise. They're in the same business/market as MSFT and conducts, or at least strives to conduct, themselves like MSFT. Businesses require contracts, agreements, support and service level agreements, integration help, etc. Are you going to entrust mision critical applications to an OS that may or may not support you if something happens? Will you get the patch in an hour or in weeks, if ever? Companies will not take that risk. We have hundreds of linux servers here and I can guarantee that we paid for at least a service contract and SLA for each of them- and that money had to go somewhere. Linux isn't always free!
The chain of logic I see MS using is 1) Make it easy for customers to run Linux on top of Hyper-V, so that 2) Many of your customers start moving Linux onto Hyper-V powered servers and, as a result 3) You have lots of control over what Linux is allowed to do via its need to use Hyper-V optimized drivers.
If I were a Linux provider, I would work damn hard (in concert with non-MS management/virtualization providers) to make sure that you keep Linux in those layers, so that MS doesn't straightjacket you.
troll much?
What sort of "control" do you think that the hypervisor exerts on the guest OS(es)? It's really just an abstraction layer. The only "chain of logic" is: 1) virtualization is an exploding market; 2) VMware dominates this market; 3) Xen is making big strides in the virtualization space; and, 3) without doing things to make your hypervisor more attractive, you risk leaving yourself a marginal player (and leave a lot of potential money on the table). So, you do what you have to make yourself at *least* as good of a solution as your competitors so you don't get locked out of a lucrative market.
Hyper-V requires Windows to use it, even as a Type 1 hypervisor. See my commentary above. ;)
Just trying to keep it all in perspective.
To see Microsoft acknowlege Linux is very good, and very healthy for both sides. Let us hope that this is the start of something bigger
Of course, MS has released Open Source before, but under BSD-style licenses. Releasing stuff under the GPL is pretty new, and given Gates' words, it is somewhat surprising.
But then, this shows that the new realism of people like Ray Ozzie is gaining ground within MS.
BTW, I find it interesting that all the MS fanboys are quiet. This seems to be hard to swallow for them ;-)
Not sure if I qualify as a fanboy. I'm a fan of MS. I'm also a fan of linux which I've used at least since the early 90's.
I think this is great news and it makes sense for all parties. I think both have their plusses and minuses and intelligent people will deploy them appropriately according to where they fit best.
re: "Oracle just announced a price increase!"
Oracle can afford to - there isn't anything out there that can match it spec-for-spec, performance, or even feature-wise. MS SQL Server can't match the transaction volumes that Oracle can take in stride, and MySQL can't match the feature-set (e.g. 2-way replication is barely doable in 5.1, but it requires a hack in the Federation tables).
Um no.
Those other companies are not a convicted monopolist like Microsoft.
Microsoft is the worst of the lot.
Maybe it has to do with Oracle not driving competition out of business via predatory pricing as Microsoft has done on innumerable occasions (most famously, when they drove Netscape out of business by bundling IE with the OS for "free" (paid for, certainly, by income from their other monopoly products) whereas Netscape had to charge for their product and, worse yet, people actually had to download it over their 28.8k modems...most people chose the freebie that came bundled...NS goes kaputt)."
@twolf2919--Dude, if you paid for netscape then you got scammed. Every version I had of it was free. I see where you're trying to go with your post, but it seems a bit mis-guided. I do agree with the bundling statement, but the rest is a bit slanted if you ask me.
Unlike MS, the Linux development team doesn't accept crap code.
Oh, wait, they don't.
As far as being able to judge crap code, I highly doubt you know what good or crap code looks like and are just a fanboi.
By the way, there were no tanks rolling into Baghdad either.
You couldn't pay me to use Linux over Windows.
You don't seem to know that Linux supports more hardware than Windows.
It runs on everything from embedded systems like wireless routers (Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, etc.) up to huge clusters.
But stay in your little Windows niche, while Linux takes over the world ;-)
Not that i'm in the "little" Windows niche... but Linux has QUITE a ways to go to take over the world. Windows costs well over $100 and they're competing with Linux which is free, yet Windows still holds over 90% of the computer market. Microsoft must be doing SOMETHING right, routers or no routers.
Repeating BS doesn't make it true.
Microsof does NOT hold 90% of the computer market.
They may hold that much of the desktop computer market, but that's just a small part of the computer market.
The embedded computer market is much much bigger, and Linux has that covered.
As I said, MS fanboys like you can stay in their little niche, while Linux takes over the world. Ignorant fanboys like you will eventually notice what the rest of the world long has known...
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Linux-Losing-Market-Share-to-Windows-Server/
It was clear from my post that *I* was talking about more than the measly desktop computing stuff.
It was you who, probably deliberately, replied with some 90% figure, which has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
And when you got caught with your distortion, you chicken out...
Typical reaction of a fanboy, despite your claim to not be in that niche.
What does it matter if the general public doesn't know much about Linux yet? The bottom line is that Windows is a niche operating system. It may be more visible to the public than Linux at this point in time, but it is a niche OS nonetheless.
Most of the "exploits" are in the software running on Linux, not Linux itself. Linux is really just a kernel. It's the rest of the stuff bundled into a distribution that makes it an operating environment. Compared to the number of directly OS-related issues in Windows OSes, Linux has a very low number of exploits.
The choice of a hypervisor comes down to ability to match your guests' needs. Close on the heels of that is finding a solution that is easy to manage and has an attractive price point. It's not a matter of seeking or avoiding Microsoft solutions.
- Will Rogers
In short, trust M$ at your own peril!
Kudos to MSFT.
I use Linux in the form of Express Gate , which boots in 5 seconds ! It came with my ASUS MOBO.
Yes , Apple...when we build our own PC`s , we get choices. And having CHOICES is the American way !
:-)
That is one of the best statements I have ever seen on Cnet..
@sanjayb: No the apple fanbois are a religion and the apple religion sucks so it's okay for AppleSuxLeo to be AppleSuxLeo because AppleSuxLeo is not worshiping any type of computer."
You're right firefoxluva95. He just worships Microsoft. If you can't see that, then you are as blind as he.
Isn't this open source software going to ruin our computers, open the door for malware and otherwise cause the world to stop turning?
Be still my beating heart!
I'm coming to join you Elizabeth!
Knowing that, I just wonder what practical value does it have to anyone running data-centers for M$ to release code to a snippet of software that allows to run Linux a tad faster on Windoze?
It brings to mind the picture of a diesel truck driver, loaded with formula 1 race cars, driving faster in the hope it will help his racers to get faster over the finish line.
And for all those who these days love meddling in Mono, trying to mix a clean Linux code base with M$ code: Just because the anaconda from Redmond sheds some skin, doesn't make it a safe house pet!
If you wonder why companies use Windows and Microsoft let me quickly highlight:
* Supportability - with over 630,000 partners in Microsoft's ecosystem and countless Microsoft Certified Professionals there is an understanding of the platform through and through. If one goes, another comes in and picks up were the last one was. There's a level of understanding across the base... it's call organization, something that Linux has a very hard time with by the very nature of the platform.
* Cost - oh yes... the old, "it's free" argument :) Love it... customers have choices here - no doubt - they could go Windows or they could go Linux but they choose the product which actually costs money time and itme again. Why? Agains, people capital - an MCP comes a dime a dozen and they are paid less in general than their "Linux loving" counterpart. Businesses understand, nothing is free.
* Trust - oh yes... another area where I am sure you'd say no way... Linux is a more trusting name brand and idea! Of course, but who is going to invest billions of dollars back into the product to make sure it works? Guess who? The company who is the world's largest software maker and supporter.
* Integration - I am sure you'll say, Microsoft doesn't integrate... sorry my friend, Active Director is a great user management system and the link between it and the rest of the stack is impressive. While Linux uses many tiers of vendors interconnected, customers choose Windows because its a single platform to support with a single point of support.
- by Hamranhansenhansen July 20, 2009 5:07 PM PDT
- Neither Flash nor Silverlight are required to view video. If you are viewing video in there, you're doing so at the cost of much less battery life and much more sweat coming off your computer. Flash and Silverlight run on your CPU. However, your GPU has a video decoder in it that goes unused if you use Flash and Silverlight. The GPU is very efficient for decoding video so it takes much less power to do it that way, generates much less heat.
- Reply to this comment
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- by DrtyDogg July 21, 2009 4:09 AM PDT
- Uhhhh,
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (139 Comments)Consumer digital audio video formats are rigorously standardized for the past 20 years. As such, all consumer players use the same video format today: ISO MPEG-4 H.264/AAC. The same movie that plays on Blu-Ray plays on iPod, and it's the exact same movie from QuickTime and Flash also, from Podcasts, from Flip video cameras, from thousands of devices from hundreds of manufacturers. Consumer devices ALL have ISO MPEG-4 H.264/AAC decoder chips in them.
So if you are talking Flash or Silverlight and video, they are both attempts to add vendor lock-in to an ISO standard format. One that is almost a decade old and which represents about 98% of the world's digital video. Although there is content that only runs in Flash or only in Silverlight, that is not video content, those are Flash or Silverlight apps. The video you see in either case can not only run elsewhere, it runs BETTER elsewhere. Flash and Silverlight are the WORST video players in the world because they have no access to the video hardware. That is why they're so PC-centric: they are using the big general-purpose CPU for a GPU task, they need a huge CPU to compensate. For comparison, look at the hardware in AppleTV: huge multi-core NVIDIA GPU that decodes the video, and one tiny underclocked Intel CPU that sleeps most of the time. A set-top box made for Flash or Silverlight would have to be a whole modern PC running Windows.
Notice you can play many more hours of YouTube on an iPhone than on a PC. That is because the iPhone's movie player is hardware/software. On a PC, you're playing the same movie in a software-only player.
"Among the new features of Silverlight 3 is the ability to tap a computer's graphics processor to offer hardware acceleration of the video (both PC and Mac)."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10199108-56.html?tag=mncol;txt
Your rant is a lttle dated. And no I have not noticed that I can play more hours of YouTube on an iPhone than on a PC.