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Open Kernel Labs Blog
July 24, 2009
Microsoft, Virtualization, and Doing the Right Thing
Last week's announcement by Microsoft of the company's submission to the Linux kernel elicited the gamut of reactions from business and open source community members. While some expounded conspiracy theories or cried foul out of habit, the consensus emerged that Redmond was merely doing the right thing - acting as a well-behaved participant in an open source project.
The announcement covered Redmond's contribution of several device drivers, some 20,000 lines of code, intended to optimize performance of Linux guest OSes hosted on the Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platform. At OK Labs, we certainly comprehend the need for streamlining guest OS performance. While our platform is already open source, we certainly understand the technical need for making the kernel submission and applaud their doing so under the GPLv2 license.
For years the Linux kernel developer community has been encouraging hardware OEMs and silicon suppliers to send their device drivers and CPU architecture code upstream as a matter of Best Practices. Putting code in the main kernel tree enables subsystem maintainers, core developers and other kernel developers to help optimize and maintain this code, to the benefit of the developer community and end-user ecosystem.
Leading that clarion call for Best Practices has been Greg Kroah-Hartman, who heads up the Linux Driver Project and was the direct recipient of Redmond's patches (see Greg's Linux Kernel Monkey Log). Given that virtualization technology suppliers like Microsoft (and OK Labs) provide virtual hardware, it makes sense that Redmond heeds this same call.
Whatever motives you might attribute to the Microsoft submission, you should remember that most virtualization platform suppliers, for enterprise, desktop and embedded applications, DO NOT typically make the effort to send patches and virtual device drivers upstream, and variously observe the letter of the license(s) governing patched code. For our part at OK Labs, we disclose not just patches for guest OSes, but the source code to OKL4 itself.
By publishing the source code and submitting it upstream, Microsoft enjoys the benefits of community purview and maintenance. As Eric Raymond famously said "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." In that regard, the Microsoft submission, like all open source development, just makes sense. Open source is about sharing -- sharing code, sharing ideas, sharing responsibility, and sharing benefit.
Posted by Steve Subar on July 24 at 06:04 AM
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About Steve Subar:
Steve Subar, CEO and President of OK Labs, has been an honored leader in the technology industry for 20 plus years and has received several accolades for his work. Steve is an avid runner who can also be found communing with his surfboard in Bondi Beach, Australia; skiing the slopes of Beaver Creek, Colorado; or searching for the perfect Pinot Noir all over the world.