MS releases Linux driver code

Software giant, Microsoft on Monday announced that the company has released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community.

Talking about this move as a break from the ordinary, the official website of Microsoft said that The code, which includes three Linux device drivers, 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.

"Today we're releasing Linux device driver code to the Linux kernel community. This is a significant milestone because it's the first time we've released code directly to the Linux community. Additionally significant is that we are releasing the code under the GPLv2 license, which is the Linux community's preferred license," said Tom Hanrahan, director of the OSTC, Microsoft.

Sam Ramji, senior director of platform Strategy at Microsoft said, "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."

Citing the economic slowdown as the key driver for this move by the company, Ramji said that many companies are consolidating their hardware and software assets and the trying to do everything with controllable costs.

"Many customers are looking into how virtualization can reduce the cost of deploying and managing their IT infrastructure through server consolidation and more efficient use of server resources." added Hanrahan.

He further said that customers have told them that they would like to standardize on one virtualization platform, and the Linux device drivers would help customers who are running Linux to consolidate their Linux and Windows servers on a single virtualization platform, thereby reducing the complexity of their infrastructure.