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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Did hell freeze over or what ?

(checks outside)

While I'm pleased that microsoft would do a thing like this I wonder what their motives are. It's not as if open source is very high up in their priority list and Steve Ballmer is on the record as saying that Open Source is enemy #1 of microsoft.

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They are fighting with VMWare in the virtualization market. They need this to have a better support of HyperV in Linux. That means work with the kernel developers and their rules.

Embrace, extend, extinguish. That should enough reason to keep out even an otherwise perfectly functional contribution.

exactly.

I wouldn't touch any code contributed by microsoft with a 10 foot pole. There is bound to be some catch or strategic trick here.

Code itself has no agenda. You would reject code solely on the basis of its submitter even if it adds desired functionality (which seems to be the case here)? That's an extremely slippery slope.

That is being greedy and unwise. Once Linux fully works well like Microsoft wants with Windows that gives Microsoft the door for them to say "Well your system is fully interoperable with Windows already, we are coming out with a new version that breaks that functionality and you will no longer be able to use the system like you have been, why don't you just switch to Windows on all of your machines and save yourself the hassle". It will take a few years but Microsoft is in business for the long haul, they will feed Linux just enough to hang it.

I am not contesting that what you say is technically possible, but that would be a bad move from Microsoft considering they are threatened non-stop with anti-monopoly suits.

Also, they don't need to change Windows, just the hypervisor. Though it would probably break other OSs too, not just Linux.

Sam Ramji, Senior Director of Platform Strategy, and Tom Hanrahan, Director of the Open Source Technology Center, discuss the release of this code under General Public License v2 and how both customer and community demand is driving better integration between Windows and Linux.

Looks like it's clearly spelled out right in the text on the page linked to. Better integration is likely to lead to more profit opportunities and their customers are demanding it. Last time I checked, ignoring your customers is a bad way to do business.

I don't see why Linux and Microsoft have to be completely separated. Open Source and closed source can peacefully coexist. If you can find a way to make money off of open source, then congratulations.

If the guy that swears he is your enemy starts to give you gifts it is wise to be cautious.

This isn't feudal China, Renaissance Italy, or the Mafia. I'm sure the actions of Microsoft are purely with the view of future profit in mind.

Oh, we agree on that. It's just the method that I'm worried about.

Microsoft can't put thousands of contributors out of business if there is no business to begin with. A lot of these people contribute their free time.

I'm not worried about contributors being put out of business. These guys now contributing to a kernel that they claimed not that long ago contains numerous patent violations seems a little weird, if not downright suspicious.

But, let's give it some time and see how it plays out.

Maybe next week they'll open source excel, who knows :)

Read the job posting (https://careers.microsoft.com/JobDetails.aspx?jid=5072, posted by lg here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=714731) where they actually mention "Imagine a job as a Linux Kernel Developer; now imagine this job inside of Microsoft. Well, it looks like Hell has frozen over, if that sounds like something impossible and you like doing the impossible and you want to be part of an exciting change, than this job is for you.".

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