http://www.theinquirer.net/

MICROSOFT DID VIOLATE the GNU General Public License (GPLv2) through the way it distributed its Hyper-V device drivers for Linux, the Software Freedom Law Center has claimed.

According to SD Times, the Vole cured its ‘oversight’ when it gave more than 20,000 lines of source code to the Linux kernel project last week. The software supposedly enables Linux to perform better when it’s run under Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualisation.

Stephen Hemminger, a lead engineer for the networking software maker Vyatta and a Linux kernel contributor, apparently discovered Microsoft’s licencing violation.

He noted that the Vole wasn’t releasing its source code, even though its Hyper-V synthetic device driver software incorporated Linux kernel source code that was licenced under the GPL. The GPL explicitly prohibits interweaving proprietary, closed source software with free, or open source, software code that’s freely available to all users.

Hemminger contacted Greg Kroah-Hartmann, an engineer working for Novell, to help the Vole get right with Linux.

Conforming to the Linux kernel’s strict licencing requirements meant that Microsoft had to release its Hyper-V device driver source code under the GPLv2, which it promptly did.

Microsoft has since tried to claim that it had always intended to contribute that source code to the Linux community and conform to the GPLv2 licencing requirements of the Linux kernel, and that it had actually been working to do that “for months”.

[ crickets ]

Excuse us, we were far too busy for moment there rolling about on the floor, laughing at that transparently ridiculous assertion by Microsoft. Yeah sure, whatever you say, Steve. µ