Re:Microsoft Contributes Linux Drivers to Linux Community
by mst on Monday July 20, 2009 @01:59PM
(#714805)
Well, first off it's a "PressPass" story - i.e. a marketing release - so maximum back-pattage is to be expected.
Secondly, what they've done is to contribute code to the linux kernel, under the GPL, in order to improve linux in a way that plays to their commercial advantage. Which is, after all, what the vast majority of corporate linux contributions are about.
The fact that his particular contribution happens to be obviously tactical rather than the more strategic aims of some of the bigger corporate backers doesn't mean that it isn't exactly what we want to see, and entirely in the spirit of commercial open source contributions.
If I ever meet any of the people at Microsoft who made this happen at a conference, I have every intention of buying them a beer to say thanks - enlightened self interest is almost always the best way to motivate a corporation to do something useful and I'd imagine the path to making MSFT's self interest sufficiently enlightened to see the advantage of funding this has been a hard one. Well done, guys!
Secondly, what they've done is to contribute code to the linux kernel, under the GPL, in order to improve linux in a way that plays to their commercial advantage. Which is, after all, what the vast majority of corporate linux contributions are about.
The fact that his particular contribution happens to be obviously tactical rather than the more strategic aims of some of the bigger corporate backers doesn't mean that it isn't exactly what we want to see, and entirely in the spirit of commercial open source contributions.
If I ever meet any of the people at Microsoft who made this happen at a conference, I have every intention of buying them a beer to say thanks - enlightened self interest is almost always the best way to motivate a corporation to do something useful and I'd imagine the path to making MSFT's self interest sufficiently enlightened to see the advantage of funding this has been a hard one. Well done, guys!