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For years Microsoft has moaned about the evils and dangers of Linux, the GPL, and free and open source software in general. CEO Steve Ballmer notably once called Linux a “cancer”. That was in 2001. Since then, Linux’s share of the server market has grown, chipping away at the old Unix dominance and leaving Microsoft scrambling for solutions.
Microsoft could not make Linux go away. Instead they have begun to make deals with companies like Novell and Redhat. In an age where virtualization is commonplace in data centers, and the number of servers a company can afford to run shrinks, Microsoft has done the unthinkable. They released 20,000 lines of code under the GPL, in the form of drivers that are expected to be added to the Linux kernel.
Their motives are clear. They need interoperability between Linux and their Hyper-V server virtualization technology. They would much rather prefer people run Windows servers and then run Linux in virtual machines than the reverse, relying on Xen or KVM technology built into Linux or VMWare. Nevertheless, it is a hug step, one that will surely have the open source community talking, and perhaps laughing at the old days when Microsoft thought Linux would die quietly.
