Microsoft Corp., which has not been in favour of Linux community over the years due to the issues related to intellectual property rights, announced on Monday it has unleashed 20,000 lines of Linux code under the General Public Licence (GPL).
The software giant has submitted the new code to the Linux Kernel community for insertion in the Linux tree, and says it will be introduced as component of the 2.6.30.1 stable release.
The newly launched code incorporates three Linux device drivers and is tailored to assist Linux users working with virtualised operating systems on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 or Windows Servers 2008 R2.
The company asserts the move is aimed at helping users to strengthen their server infrastructure in the data centre, and attributed customer demand as a “powerful catalyst” in bringing upon this new shift in its offerings.
It has been an astonishing turnaround for the software company that once depicted Linux as a “cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches”.
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This unbelievable move from Microsoft came as a surprise for Linux Foundation exec director Jim Zemlin who touted this by saying, “Hell has frozen over, the seas have parted,” before declaring himself “tickled”.