Linus defends Microsoft
Linux inventor
Linus Torvalds said that Microsoft hatred is an Open Source disease which
prevented the company from being a good decent citizen.
Last week Microsoft
submitted 20000 lines of code to the Linux kernel, all licensed under the
GPL. Torvalds said that he hadn't seen the code yet and he is not interested
in driver code anyway. He said he was a big believer in "technology over
politics". I don't care who the code comes from, as long as there are solid
reasons for it to exist and he didn't have to worry about licensing
issues.
“I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I
think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development,
and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also
not shutting other people and companies out,” he wrote in his
blog.
Torvalds said that there were 'extremists' in the free software world,
but that's one major reason why he does not call what he does 'free
software'. Free software seems to mean that you have to be associated
with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred. Torvalds said
that he had no doubt that Microsoft's code release was for selfish reasons
but that was how all open source code was written! “We all "scratch our own
itches". It's why I started Linux, it's why I started git, and it's why I am
still involved. It's the reason for everybody to end up in open source, to
some degree,” he said.
No one complains when hardware companies write drivers
for the hardware they produce. Neither is there muttering when IBM funds all
the Power development, and works on enterprise features because they sell
into the enterprise.