BANGALORE, INDIA: Recently, Microsoft released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community. The code, which includes three Linux device drivers, has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree.

The drivers will be available to the Linux community and customers alike, and will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

Sam Ramji, sr. director, Platform Strategy  is responsible for developing sustainable partnerships with open source communities as part of his role as senior director of Platform Strategy in Microsoft’s Server and Tools organization. This includes overseeing the operation of Microsoft’s Open Source Technology Center (OSTC), which serves as a landing point for open source communities and companies interested in working with Microsoft, as well as a resource for Microsoft product groups interested in open source technology.

Tom Hanrahan, who also plays a critical role in Microsoft’s day-to-day open source interoperability efforts, is the director of the OSTC. His team played a key role in the development of the drivers, and will manage their ongoing enhancement.

Sam Ramji and Tom Hanrahan talk about releasing Linux device driver code to the Linux community in an interview with CIOL. Excerpts:

CIOL: Microsoft has gone to great lengths to engage the open source community. How does the release of code play into Microsoft’s overall open source strategy?

Sam Ramji: We are seeing Microsoft communities and open source communities grow together, which is ultimately of benefit to our customers. The Linux community, for example, has built a platform used by many customers. So our strategy is to enhance interoperability between the Windows platform and many open source technologies, which includes Linux, to provide the choices our customers are asking for.

A central part of our strategy is the work done in the OSTC, which we opened about three years ago. The OSTC has a deep technical expertise in Linux, UNIX and open source technologies, along with strong social connections into open source communities. We have learned a great deal from the various community leaders about how to effectively work together, and are eager to continue the dialogue.

Our work in this area is all about providing more flexibility and choice, and requests from our customers and partners were really the impetus behind those efforts. We are hearing more and more customers and open source partners telling us they see some of their best value when they deploy new open source software solutions on top of existing Microsoft platforms. Today’s release would have been unheard of from Microsoft a few years ago, but it’s a prime example that customer demand is a powerful catalyst for change.

CIOL: So what exactly the company has released to open source community?

Tom Hanrahan: Today we’re releasing Linux device driver code to the Linux kernel community. This is a significant milestone because it’s the first time we’ve released code directly to the Linux community. Additionally significant is that we are releasing the code under the GPLv2 license, which is the Linux community’s preferred license.

Our initial goal in developing the code was to enable Linux to run as a virtual machine on top of Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor and implementation of virtualization.

The Linux device drivers we are releasing are designed so Linux can run in enlightened mode, giving it the same optimized synthetic devices as a Windows virtual machine running on top of Hyper-V. Without this driver code, Linux can run on top of Windows, but without the same high performance levels. We worked very closely with the Hyper-V team at Microsoft to make that happen.