Microsoft Releases GPL Code to the Community
July 20th, 2009 by Jeff Jaffe
Earlier today, Microsoft released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community under GPL.
There are many angles to reflect on. The growth and broadening of the open source community. Microsoft’s increasing embrace of open source. Corporate strategies. The effectiveness of Greg Kroah-Hartman’s Linux driver project. I’m sure many people will comment and will applaud this continued progress. Hopefully the knee-jerk naysayers will appreciate the progress as well.
These broad perspectives refer to the transformation of software development models and transformative industry developments. As a refresher from these intergalactic discussions, I’ll try a more prosaic approach.
Focus on the Customer
Novell and Microsoft created our partnership primarily to focus on customer needs. We heard from customers that there was a need for greater interoperability between Linux and Windows. We launched a broad partnership collaborating in technology and business to meet customer needs. This was often misunderstood—we were criticized for it—but both companies stuck to our guns because the customer need was the overarching consideration.
The thread called “customer need” continues to pull us in our partnership. A byproduct is that Microsoft finds that it needs to participate more intimately in the open source community.
I’ve blogged often about this. In November of 2007, I outlined how Novell and Microsoft extended our partnership to include accessibility. The Moonlight project saw a greater embrace by Microsoft of the open source Mono project, and has enabled Microsoft to add value to the Linux desktop.
Linux Drivers
Part of our original partnership was to ensure that in virtual environments Windows is optimized to run as a guest under SLES, and SLES is optimized to be a Windows guest. Clearly optimization is a customer requirement! Noone can afford performance penalties running virtual. In time, we have found that optimization is best achieved by the creation of additional Linux driver code. Microsoft recognized the performance opportunity and recognized the obligation to release the code using GPLv2.
I’m proud of Novell’s role in this. I’m proud that our partnership brought clarity on the technical optimization need. I’m proud of the personal role played by Novell Fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman and the Linux driver project.
But with all of the broad implications for open source, and my pride at the milestone—I’m most proud to see how the main mantra—satisfy the customer—remains the primary driver.