MS contributing to Linux

[Christopher A. Williams]

On Tue, 2009-07-21 at 09:49 -0700, Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-07-21 at 10:44 -0500, Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
> > On Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:15:35 -0700
> > Smoot Carl-Mitchell <smoot at tic.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > This is an MS move to compete with VMware. I am not sure why you want
> > > to run Linux under Windows, but there are a lot of Windows shops out
> > > there that may see some benefits.
> > 
> > And they'll curse Linux when it crashes and us for telling them Linux
> > is more stable.
> 
> Windows 2008 server is pretty stable.  It is a far cry from XP or Vista.
> I do not know how stable it is as a virtual hosting server, though.
> What is interesting is VMware is a step ahead of them.  VMware in large
> environments just runs its virtual machine monitor on a host without a
> Linux kernel.  The idea is to run a big virtualization cluster where you
> can move virtual machines around at will. I do not know if MS's
> virtualization roadmap is heading in the same direction, but I would not
> be surprised if it is.
> 
> With this move, MS is admitting heterogeneity in the datacenter is a
> given.  They lost the war against Linux adoption.  Their move still
> bears watching, since their track record with the OSS community is
> hardly stellar.

Actually, in all seriousness, if MS makes a contribution to the Linux
kernel under GPLv2, and the kernel team accepts those changes into the
tree, isn't this a major win for the Linux community from a legal
perspective?

Think about it. If MS contributed to the kernel under GPLv2, wouldn't
that potentially gut their (known to be FUD) claims regarding patent
violations on the part of Linux, even if GPLv3 potentially applied later
on? I'm not a lawyer, but this would seem to be a very rational legal
argument to make.

Any lawyers with GPL / Patent expertise care to chime in?

Cheers,

Chris


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