Microsoft's Shift: It Contributes Drivers to the Linux Community
by Sam Dean - Jul. 20, 2009Comments (4)- Related Blog Posts
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In a move that marks a notable shift for Microsoft, the company has announced that it has released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community. The code includes three Linux device drivers, and has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree. "The drivers will be available to the Linux community and customers alike, and will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V," company officials said in a statement.
Sam Ramji, Microsoft's open source czar, commented on the move in an interview posted on Microsoft's site. "Today’s release would have been unheard of from Microsoft a few years ago," he said "but it’s a prime example that customer demand is a powerful catalyst for change." It's a smart, long overdue play from the company.
According to Ramji:
"We are seeing Microsoft communities and open source communities grow together, which is ultimately of benefit to our customers. The Linux community, for example, has built a platform used by many customers. So our strategy is to enhance interoperability between the Windows platform and many open source technologies, which includes Linux, to provide the choices our customers are asking for."
We interviewed Ramji--a person who has a lot of respect in the open source community--shortly after he took over his position at Microsoft. He made clear then that he intended to change Microsoft's culture to work more efficiently with open source, and I'm betting Microsoft's latest news is a result of his efforts.
Matt Asay has a good post up today on how Microsoft opened its Hyper-V virtualization technology up to Linux, and embraced the GPL (GNU General Public License). "Microsoft, in short, can't ignore open source, including Linux, without ignoring its own customers," he writes. I couldn't agree more. Many of Microsoft's customers are working in heterogenous environments, and virtualization accelerates that trend.
Regarding virtualization, Ramji adds:
"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."
The Hyper-V news is yet another reason why proprietary virtualization players such as VMware should be very nervous about free virtualization options such as Microsoft's and open source virtualization applications. Even though Microsoft continues to strike sketchy patent-protection deals surrounding Linux, today's news is long overdue, and a sign that Microsoft is beginning to understand that it can benefit by building bridges to and from open source platforms.
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