The Linux Foundation has released its annual report on the top contributors to Linus Torvalds’s open source operating system, and there’s a new name on the list: Microsoft.
For years, Microsoft kept its distance from the open source movement, and at one point, CEO Steve Ballmer referred to Linux as a cancer, seeing the open source OS as a threat to Microsoft’s Windows operating system and other proprietary tools built by the Redmond software giant. But in recent years, the company has come to realize that it needs the open source community on its side. And in some cases, Microsoft is actually contributing to high-profile open source projects, including Hadoop, Samba, and, yes, the grandaddy of the all: Linux.
According to the new report from the Linux Foundation — penned by kernel contributor Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux Foundation vice president of marketing and developer programs Amanda McPherson, and Jonathan Corbet, another Linux contributor and the editor of open source webzine LWN.net — Microsoft accounted for 1 percent of the contributions to the Linux kernel between release of version 2.6.36 in October 2010 and the arrival of version 3.2 in January 2012. That puts the Redmond giant in the top 20 corporate contributors to the project.
The top three contributors are Red Hat (10.7 percent), Intel (7.2), and Novell, which is now owned by the Attachmate Group (3.3). But the largest chuck of contributors have no corporate affiliation (16.2 percent).
In July 2009, Microsoft surprised many in the tech world when it contributed 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community, and the contributions didn’t stop there. In July 2011, as reported by LWN.net, Microsoft developer K. Y. Srinivasan was among the top contributors to version 3.0 of the Linux kernel, as he worked to hone the drivers for Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platform. Srinivasan’s Hyper-V work accounts for much of the work covered by the new report from the Linux Foundation.
The aim is to ensure that Linux runs as a “first-class citizen” atop the virtual servers provided by Hyper-V. “As organizations around the world embrace the cloud, demand remains paramount for mixed-source virtualization solutions that can both leverage existing IT assets and centralize management functions,” says Gianugo Rabellino, Microsoft’s senior director for open source communities. “These requirements serve as the inspiration both for the work we have done to create a robust set of interoperable solutions, but also for the contributions we make at a more foundational level.”
What’s telling, Linux contributor Greg Kroah-Hartman tells Wired, is that the code originally contributed by Microsoft in 2009 has now been whittled down to less than half its size. “When it first was released by Microsoft, it was about 20,000 lines of code. Now it is 7,000 lines, and supports more devices, [including] mice and newer releases of the Hyper-V system,” he says. “Merging their code into the kernel tree caused it to get smaller overall, making it easier to maintain, and have less bugs.
“Pretty big proof that getting the code into the main kernel tree was the right thing to do.”
Source: Wired