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Greg Kroah-Hartman decries lapsed Microsoft contributions to Linux


By David Worthington
September 10, 2009 — 
Microsoft's developers were missing in action after the company donated GPL-licensed drivers to the Linux kernel community in July, leaving significant work to the Linux community, according to Linux driver project lead and Novell fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman. The company rekindled its involvement after Kroah-Hartman published a status report this week.

Microsoft donated a set of three General Public License v2 license drivers (Hyper-V Linux Integration Components) to the Linux community in July. The drivers are designed to improve the performance of the Linux operating system when it is virtualized on the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V hypervisor-based virtualization system, and they were released after the company was found to be in violation of the GPL.

The drivers required a "massive cleanup effort," consisting of more than 200 patches to bring the code into a "semi-sane kernel coding style," Kroah-Hartman wrote in the status report.

"Their code needed lots of work to get to normal Linux coding style acceptance, that's nothing new. It did take over 200 patches to get their code into reasonable shape, which is a bit excessive," he said. Microsoft did not contribute to the patching effort.

"Microsoft developers seem to have disappeared, and no one is answering my e-mails. If they do not show back up to claim this driver soon, it will be removed in the 2.6.33 release. So sad..." Kroah-Hartman wrote in the status report.

Version 2.6.31 of the Linux kernel was released yesterday and did not include the drivers. They are slated for version 2.6.32, which is due out in three to four months, and the 2.6.33 release will be out in three to four months after that, Kroah-Hartman said. "The patches done by the community (and myself) were to fix the code to follow the proper kernel coding rules."

Microsoft contests Kroah-Hartman's assertion that there was no contact between them. "I am not sure where this is coming from. I know for a fact that the team has been chatting with Greg as recently as yesterday," responded Microsoft spokesperson Blair Fillingham.

"Yes, that is true, but that is after I posted the original message to the Linux kernel mailing list," Kroah-Hartman said. The mailing list was distributed this week.

Kroah-Hartman added that he did not see any kernel patches from Microsoft since the original code release, except for an update to the TODO file that happened earlier this week.

However, Microsoft was not alone in its absence of activity. Several companies "popped back up" after the status report was published, Kroah-Hartman said. "That's one reason why I do these status reports," he added.

The status reports notify companies that their code might be dropped from the Linux kernel if they are laggards in the development process, he said. Although not hesitant to point a finger at Microsoft, Kroah-Hartman refused to name these other companies, claiming it would be “rude” to disclose private e-mail information.

"But what's the big deal here?" he asked. "This is the normal development process happening, and a company learning how to deal with it. It happens every single day with all companies who are new to the Linux kernel development process. Sure, some do it better than others, but in the end, it's all good."


Related Search Term(s): Linux, Microsoft


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Comments

09/10/2009 07:04:00 PM EST

This article is incorrect. Greg pointed the finger at a number of companies including Intel and Google. You owe Greg an apology and a retraction, I think.

United StatesJames


09/11/2009 05:21:46 AM EST

NO "MICROSOFT" in Linux Kernel!

Russia (Russian Federation)pavlinux


09/12/2009 01:56:32 AM EST

So, business as usual. It just so happens to be Microsoft. Nothing to see here. Move along.

United Statessupercheetah


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