Microsoft's Linux contribution: Thank Novell?
Microsoft's move to offer several Linux drivers owes a lot to a key programmer at Novell.
Linux veteran--and Novell fellow--Greg Kroah-Hartman suggested to Microsoft about four months ago that the company release the three drivers to be part of Linux under the GNU General Public License (GPL) terms that govern Linux code. Kroah-Hartman, who helps oversee the inclusion of drivers into Linux, said he worked within his company to find the right contacts at Microsoft.
"They reacted well," Kroah-Hartman said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "They were open to it. It just took a while to hash out all the details."
Microsoft's Sam Ramji credited Kroah-Hartman for helping guide Microsoft through the process. "He provided valuable guidance and feedback to the Open Source Technology Center, which enabled the team to contribute the code in a way that was acceptable with the Linux kernel community processes," Ramji said in an e-mail interview.
The move illustrates the combination of social, legal, and technical factors that must be addressed before Microsoft's code could arrive. Anyone may contribute software to the Linux kernel, but actually getting it accepted can be a complicated matter, even for a company that hasn't bad-mouthed the GPL. This time, at least, Microsoft's pragmatism carried the day.
Microsoft had been working on the code contribution for some months, Ramji said; it happened to be ready in time to announce this week to coincide with the OSCON 2009 open-source conference.
As I noted yesterday, Microsoft made the move largely to help strengthen Windows Server as a host environment for Linux.
"Microsoft decided to release the drivers to support broader adoption and facilitate better performance of Linux running as a guest operating system where Windows Server 2008 is the host," Ramji said.
Kroah-Hartman said Microsoft met all the requirements for inclusion of the code in the Linux kernel and said it will probably show up in version 2.6.32 of the kernel, which will be released about four or five months from now.
Microsoft said it made sense to release the code under version 2 of the GPL, even though Microsoft has been critical of the GPL and used other open-source licenses for most of the code it has made freely available in the past.
"Because GPLv2 is the license of the Linux kernel, we are releasing the device driver code under the GPLv2 license to facilitate interoperability," Ramji said. "Our use of the GPLv2 license, as requested by the Linux community, means we will not charge a royalty for or assert any patents covering the driver code we are contributing."
Kroah-Hartman, who heads the Linux Driver Project, has been arguing for some time that all Linux drivers should be released under open-source licenses and said that Microsoft's move represents a change in its attitude toward the GPL and highlights that the GPL is a valid license for a project to be released under.
"It's just a validation of what all of us have been publicly saying for many years," Kroah-Hartman said.
He noted that Microsoft is now a full fledged Linux developer and will be responsible for maintaining its piece of Linux. He noted that the community has already submitted a couple of patches aimed at improving Microsoft's code.
Microsoft didn't close the door to contributing more to Linux.
"We expect to maintain the Hyper-V Linux device drivers as part of our product development and support process for Hyper-V, which we expect will involve ongoing contributions," Ramji said. "Part of the OSTC's charter is to continually evaluate open source, market conditions, customer requests and scenarios, and as such we will evaluate possibilities to work with additional open source projects in the future, including the Linux Kernel."
I asked Ramji whether Microsoft sees any dissonance in contributing to Linux at the same time it has claimed that Linux violates its intellectual property. His answer:
"Microsoft is pragmatically focused on helping customers and partners be successful in a heterogeneous technology world," Ramji responded. "We both compete and partner with traditional commercial vendors, and will continue to do so with open source-based businesses, with a focus on providing value for shared customers."
Kroah-Hartman said he doesn't spend a lot of time on the legal questions.
"Hey, companies are big," he said, noting that sometimes one part of a company has a different stance than another. "It has nothing to do with me."
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. 
Not trying to start an argument here. However, could anyone shine a light on this? How has microsoft claimed this and in what venue?
And they have sued TomTom over their use of the VFAT filesystem in their GPS systems, which use Linux, since MS indeed has several VFAT patents. These patents were once invalidated, but MS got them re-instated in the US. They are not valid outside the US, and TomTom is a Dutch company, but since they want to continue selling their GPS systems in the US, they settled with MS.
Came straight out of Steve Ballmer's mouth.
I don't see Windows as a good host, my Linux systems work; I'm not about to monkey around with that.
Anyone actually wanting to use this?
As for anyone wanting to use it? Heh... I don't see many companies (outside of Microsoft) using Hyper-V at all unless they are given ultra-deep discounts, are testing it in non-production environments, or have drank the kool-aid way too deeply. I'm not saying this out of any partisanship mind, but on pure and comparative technical merits.
choices are good
If anything; it gives Linux a bigger chance of remaining in my data centre.
Cool!
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Well, DNA strains are simply what they are; and, it is supposed that you do know that after the Microsoft Corporation and the International Business Machines (IBM) had the divorce a different child was born (OS/2 Operating System was created from the ground up) and its DNA strains (in the form of the JFS) can be traced to the Linux Operating System - Duh!
VFAT is crap, always has been crap!
With ext3, and ext4 on the way, and others, VFAT is so like, last century.
To be fair: Most geek sticks. Makes moving stuff to Linux-OSX-Windows-Whatever and back very, very easy.
Every USB memory stick, or SD card in digital cameras, are using VFAT. It is pretty much the universal transfer filesystem.
Sure, VFAT is a hack, but it is and will continue to be in wide use.
As far as Ext3, or Ext4, can you access that from anything but Linux??? There is an Ext2 filesystem driver for Windows, which would probably also work for Ext3 (sans journaling), but nothing for Ext4, as far as I know.
And there was a recent patch to the VFAT driver in Linux to avoid the patent issue.
VFAT *does* suppor long filenames. FAT doesn't.
:-) We might see this some day.
I've always figured that the absolute best way for Microsoft to catapult itself into complete and dynamic domination (instead of the crumbling ivory tower they have going now), is to create their own *nix-based distro and make the core open-source, like Apple did. Failing that, making their own Linux distro would probably insure that they at least had a foot in the door ten-plus years down the road (esp. if they had a proprietary compatibility layer akin to WINE).
- by nato July 24, 2009 9:38 PM PDT
- "Novell" and "the Linux community" are not interchangeable words. When you see this kind of article full of fallacies, it's FUD-filled and it's just an infomercial from Microsoft.
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(21 Comments)*Sigh*. Microsoft really thinks readers are fools.