Linux Foundation Platinum Members list now includes VMware, Cisco, and Microsoft.

[Robert Donovan]

Fairly sure most folks on this list are aware of this phenomenon, but Bryan
Lunduke did a great show on YouTube about this. Thought the rest of the
list members might find it interesting--and, not to get alarmist, let's
just say of some concern as we go forward.

Robert

[David Brown]

Post by Robert Donovan
Fairly sure most folks on this list are aware of this phenomenon, but Bryan
Lunduke did a great show on YouTube about this. Thought the rest of the
list members might find it interesting--and, not to get alarmist, let's
just say of some concern as we go forward.
http://youtu.be/-YdL7Hch78s

I'm wondering what I feel about this podcast. It feels like a kind of
conspiracy theory approach to what I feel is actually a very good
thing. I think we are well beyond the era when Microsoft sees Linux
as a competitor but as a tool they use for their business.

They have been contributing to the kernel since 2009 (they've
contributed about 1500 patches since then), which I would consider a
much more significant "influence" over the kernel itself.

Their contributions have primarily been over hypervisor support, which
makes sense, since they are a significant provider of cloud-based
Linux virtual hosting.

But, a vast majority of the contributions to the Linux kernel are from
corporate developers. A lot still comes from hardware developers, but
there is a lot of growing work being contributed by companies using
Linux.

This "influence" that actually affects the kernel are code
contributions, which are all done publically.

Of course, another significant effort by Microsoft has been to add
Linux compatibility to the Windows kernel. That is interesting to
think about. The Windows kernel can directly run Linux executables.
There is no Linux kernel code involved in this, the emulation happens
at the syscall level. Lots of people find this useful, and it is much
more of a closed-source "competitor" to Linux.

David