Microsoft contributes to kernel tree

[deanjo]

Hell has indeed frozen over...

REDMOND, Wash., July 20, 2009 ? Today, in a break from the ordinary, Microsoft released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community. 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.

Rest of the article here.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Jul09/07-20LinuxQA.mspx

At this pace they will surpass Canonical in so time with kernel contributions.

[deanjo]

The LKML announcement from GKH.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/7/20/167

DateMon, 20 Jul 2009 09:00:25 -0700FromGreg Kroah-Hartman <>Subject[patch 00/54] [Announce] Microsoft Hyper-V drivers for Linux
Hi all,

I'm happy to announce, that after many months of discussions, Microsoft
has released their Hyper-V Linux drivers under the GPLv2. Following
this message, will be the patches that add the drivers to the
drivers/staging/ tree, and a whole bunch of cleanups.

It's taken a long road to get here, and I'd like to thank the following
people who made this possible:
- Steve Hemminger for the initial prodding and extreme patience
- Hank Janssen for providing the code and working with me to get it
into a workable and semi-mergable state. His involvement within
Microsoft was also invaluable.
- Sam Ramji for his push within Microsoft to make this happen in a
manner that works with the Linux community.
- Novell for sponsoring my work on the Linux Driver project, without
which, this would not have even been possible.
And there are many others both within Novell and Microsoft, who I do not
want to slight by not naming, but the list would be too long to go into.

These drivers are to enable Linux to work better when running as a guest
on top of the Hyper-V system. There is still a lot of work to do in
getting this into "proper" mergable state, and moving it out of the
staging directory, but Hank and I will be undertaking this task. See
the TODO file in the drivers/staging/hv/ directory if anyone wishes to
help out with this task.

The code should be showing up in the linux-next tree soon, as the
patches are now in my public tree.

If anyone has any questions about this code, please let me and Hank know
about it.

thanks,

greg k-h

[DeepDayze]

That code will provide support for Linux guests under their Hyper-V virtualization solution...but ONLY on a Windows HOST. Has anyone tested Hyper-V?