Microsoft Has Written Drivers For Linux

Making its rounds on the Internet today is news that Microsoft is writing drivers for Linux. Yes, really. No, they are not to sabotage the hardware support on Linux or anything to impair the platform, but rather to provide Linux support for their Hyper-V virtualization system. These Microsoft drivers for Linux are licensed under the GPLv2 and Microsoft is hoping they will get accepted into the mainline kernel.

Greg Kroah-Hartman's free driver writing team has been working on this project with Microsoft too, and shortly the Hyper-V Linux support should be merged as a staging driver. Greg made an announcement regarding this work on the Linux kernel mailing list. Microsoft also made a big PR announcement about contributing Linux drivers to the Linux community.