Microsoft Linux code originally violated GPL

By Sam Varghese
Thursday, 23 July 2009 22:58

Opinion and Analysis

The driver code that Microsoft contributed to the Linux kernel this week was originally in violation of the GPL, a post by Stephen Hemminger, an engineer with open source vendor Vyatta, says.
The contribution was 22,000 lines of code, which, as iTWire reported, makes up "four drivers that provide hooks for any Linux distribution to run on Windows Server 2008 and its Hyper-V hypervisor virtualisation."

Hemminger wrote that the saga began "when one of the users on the Vyatta forum inquired about supporting the Hyper-V network driver in the Vyatta kernel.

"A little googling found the necessary drivers, but on closer examination there was a problem. The driver had both open-source components which were under GPL, and statically linked to several binary parts," Hemminger wrote.

"The GPL does not permit mixing of closed and open source parts, so this was an obvious violation of the license.

"Rather than creating noise, my goal was to resolve the problem, so I turned to (Linux Driver Project head) Greg Kroah-Hartman. Since Novell has a (too) close association with Microsoft, my expectation was that Greg could prod the right people to get the issue resolved.

"It took longer than expected, but finally Microsoft decided to do the right thing and release the drivers."

While the release of the drive code has been hailed as a significant move, this revelation will confirm one thing for many - that they need to continue to be as wary of Microsoft as they were before.