Microsoft donates some of its code to Linux

Microsoft's contribution of GPL'd code is a strategic move, nothing more or less. Any huge organisation spies on its enemies, spies on its friends and does a million contradictory things at once. It is the nature of the beast. Anything run and administered by humans has a many-fold nature, and the larger an organisation, the more contradictory things it is going to do.

Enjoy the code if you need it, but do not worry too much the politics. Microsoft is a public company, and it has a statutory obligation to do what is best for its business and make money. This release of GPL's code was a way for it to beat its competition over the head and make money.

It's bloody obvious.

VMWare rules the virtualisation market, with lesser players like Xen and then the real minority players and complete jokes like Virtualbox. Microsoft's Virtual Server is just not as good as VMWare and Hyper-V has an uphill struggle.

MS needs to produce this to stay in the virtualisation game.

I'm sure MS, using 20 sets of eyes, went through every line over and over again to make sure that nothing proprietary was given away. If it isn't as generic as possible I'm sure heads will roll. It's not as if there are too many lawyer-programmers who can confirm the legal ramifications of a code fragment. It’ll be interesting it if they made any mistakes.

I know server virtualization is pretty appealing considering the quickness of VM creation and the cost savings of not purchasing new hardware. The cost of testing/implementing Linux on an existing production MS Server08 running with Hyper-V is practically $0. So this actually makes it appealing to customers to test Linux which I'm guessing is a way to stay competitive with VMware in MS’s view.

So why would they threaten companies with infringement to force them into buying an MS Linux license, and at the same time add more support into their server OS for Linux? It sounds like a double edge sword. It’s as if the threat of legal action is really a sales pitch that turns corporate Linux shops into Microsoft customers. If you think about it, MS says they’ll sue you and it’ll cost you a certain amount of money to fight it. Instead they could just buy MS licenses at a fraction of the cost of prosecution and be considered legitimate. At the same time, opening up doors to other cheap MS licensing.

If this is true then this is quite the insidious plan. Considering all the talent they’ve lost over the years in various sectors and their lack of focus in general, I see this as a massive shift back to a decade ago. They bullied companies in the past, but I expected that they learned their lesson. It’s as if the masterminds of the mortgage scandal which has wrecked their economy are now working for them.

Evil capitalist, thy name is Microsoft.

"VMWare rules the virtualisation market, with lesser players like Xen and then the real minority players and complete jokes like Virtualbox."

Do you work for those jokers or own a bunch of their stock making a statement like that?

Give it up already.
HB

will be better able to adapt to Windows non-standing APIs?

Sorry if I used the terms wrong, someone explained to me that the biggest problem with virtualizing Windows in Linux was the Windows APIs, and all I managed to remember was the term Windows API and not much else.

And shouldn't its own interest..well...be in its own interest?

So funny the so called anti-capitalist attitude of people to MS whilst they push other commercial companies (and yes, that covers anyone pushing linux in the enterprise.).

PS : Has nobody seen VMware's pricing recently...all industry leaders can have a very big fall if they aren't careful. Xen, Hyper-V, Parallels etc may have good reason to have heart....

Just because micro$oft wants their code in the Linux kernel does NOT mean it has to be adopted and included. They most certainly can just say no. The keepers of the kernel, that is.

. . .It's not as if microcrap stole open-source code in the past. Right?! Remember M$ media player, or how about the tcp stack? Buttholes.
To hell with M$! We don't need their stinkin' buggy code in our mix.

- Laterz!

'The cost of testing/implementing Linux on an existing production MS Server08 running with Hyper-V is practically $0'

I bet MS licensing would mean you would have to pay for a license for every connection and I'm amazed to hear MS Server08 is practically $0. Its alot mor in the UK!

No, I simply use VMWare and realise it's not at all bad.

MS' stuff? Less functional and more of a pain in the arse to use than VMWare. Good quality of emulation, though.

Xen? Good for some things, real pain in the arse to use at times. They also have a less than helpful support attitude of 'ok, so we don't precisely emulate the real hardware we claim to, but please go away because no-one else uses the hardware in that way.'. Despite the fact in theory it's an exact hardware emulation, at least under some of its modes.

Some sense may have been knocked into Xen recently, though.

What's your other alternative? Qemu? It's not a bad app in some cases, for some architectures and for some operating systems and on certain platforms. Lots of variables. Bit dubious about it for serious use.

Virtual Box? Don't make me laugh. I wanted to like it as Innotek created a lot of nice apps I'm rather grateful for. Since then, Sun haven't improved it. It just about runs Windows on certain platforms. Try other OS and it falls over. Reported issues - still not fixed a number of releases later.

Call me fussy, but I become somewhat dubious about the quality of a VM's emulation if it doesn't work with certain OS, even if that OS is not the one you wish to run.

"it is fairly clear that the code the Vole is contributing is not going to help Linux compete better against Windows"

And Microsoft is supposed to give away something to it's competitor so that they can compete better against it?

The collective intelligence of the WWW does seem equivalent to it's lowest common denominator? Or was it, during the times of printed media, idiots didn't have a free go?

Whatever you do Linux community, I would rather you don't accept this trojan [code].

Why? Everybody knows, that you take multiple building material to build a house, or in this case a trojan horse! Not in the sense of a computer trojan or virus, but a legislative one!

What stops any cyber companies giving away code that when appended to your competitive code it would automatically become propitiatory.