Top Five Linux Contributor: Microsoft
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | July 17, 2011
In a Linux Weekly News story, currently only available to subscribers, an analysis of Linux 3.0 contributors reveals that Microsoft was the fifth largest corporate contributer to Linux 3.0. While only 15h overall, that still puts Microsoft behind only Red Hat, Intel, Novell, and IBM in contributing new code to this version of Linux.
To be exact, Microsoft developer K. Y Srinivasan gets the credit for helping to improve Linux. Of course, as you might guess, neither Srinivasan nor Microsoft are doing this due to any particular love tor Linux per se.
The vast bulk of Microsoft’s contributions has been to its own Hyper-V virtualization hypervisor drivers. Hyper-V is Microsoft’s 64-bit hypervisor-based virtualization system. It’s Microsoft’s answer to VMware and Linux’s own native Kernel-based Virtualization Manager (KVM).
Phi Beta Iota: This is interesting–and disappointing. Microsoft could be doing so much more. OpenBTS, Open Data Access, Open Spectrum, and Open Source Intelligence (now M4IS2) are rapidly approaching take-off points that will see them join Free/Open Source Software and Open Hardware. Microsoft could be central to all of this, but it evidently chooses not to. It recent waste of Sir Richard Branson in delivering platitudes to their huge event is a real let-down.
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