Microsoft expands into  Linux                                                               traffic news duiih


         Microsoft expands into  Linux






 Although it may seem that the world of proprietary software and the free software world are separated by an insurmountable distance, companies like Microsoft (who portray the business model focused on the development of proprietary software) collaborate actively in the development of projects of open source as a Samba or, even, the Linux kernel (takes the place number 17 between the 20 companies that contribute most to the project). With the idea of better manage its relationship with the world of free software and reverse the results of his collaborations in its own products.
 

The President of the subsidiary of Microsoft Jean Paoli, one of the developers of XML format which since 1996 is linked to the company from Redmond and in recent years has been linked to free software, will be who lead a new project inclined towards Linux.
 

Precisely this team which developed the interoperability of Microsoft strategy will be responsible for carrying out the mission entrusted to the new subsidiary that will focus on improving the results derived from the Microsoft investment in open standards, interoperability and free software.




Team also has worked very closely with many Microsoft engineers in some standardization of the company initiatives, including projects with W3C, HTML5, the 2.0 HTTP IETF standards for the cloud (DMTF and OASIS) and many environments of software such as MongoDB, Node.js and Phonegap/Cordova.

Microsoft expands into
Name Microsoft Open Technologies, the subsidiary aims to develop the Microsoft investment in interoperability, open standards and open source. "The subsidiary provides a new way to engage in a way more clear and defined." "This new structure will help to facilitate the interaction between Microsoft proprietary development processes and efforts and open innovation of company relations with the communities of open source and open standards", said Jean Paoli.





And although this movement of Microsoft can draw attention, are really quite sense because becoming increasingly is common to find mixed environments that coexist open systems and proprietary systems that must interoperate between themselves. In fact, the interoperability of systems and the use of open standards becomes a requirement that, fortunately, increasingly more demanding and requires more closed systems to rethink their strategy.


Microsoft expands into
Microsoft has already been present in the list of the 20 contributors to the Linux kernel, according to the Linux Foundation in its past reports where mentioned its main contributors.


At some point, several years ago, Steve Ballmer described Linux as a cancer, that he was seen as a threat to Windows and other services that offers the company, however those of Redmond have realized how important it is to have the community of open source on its side and have become contributors in important projects open source such as HadoopSamba and Linux itself.




Microsoft has generated more than 1 per cent in contributions to the kernel between the launch of its 2.6.36 October 2010 version and the version 3.2 January 2012. This puts the Redmond in the place 17 companies more contributing to the kernel, but not compared to the first three places as Red Hat with 10.7%, Intel with 7.2% and Novell with 3.3%.
 


The company knows that several companies use, in addition to Windows, open source technology, so they have approached the project in a more practical way. From 2009 they started working for Linux contributing 20,000 lines of code for a driver and they then work to implement Windows Server virtualization technology.

 

However, the Linux Foundation believes that this partnership shows the current widespread adoption of the Linux kernel and has forced Microsoft to work with him, as recognition of large corporate computer ecosystem to which it belongs.




"Given that Linux has reached a State of ubiquity, where both businesses and mobile telephony markets are relying on the operating system, Microsoft clearly is working to adapt", noted the Linux Foundation said in a statement.




In recent years, more than 1,000 developers of some 200 companies have participated in the kernel. The individual contribution is the largest number of changes has generated some 11,400 (16%), with big companies like Red Hat and Intel contributed between 10 and 7 per cent.

 


With each new version of the Linux kernel, they incorporate between 8,000 and 12,000 improvements that are personally supervised by Linus Torvalds, every two or three months. The vast majority of these changes were developed by third parties.




The formation of Microsoft Open Technologies could be a result of a legal discussion on open source speculates Hilwa, IDC analyst. "This is an interesting development." "Suggests to me that this arrangement is the best that ever to address the problems that might have advocates of Microsoft with the isolation of open source code and IP protection", said the analyst. "In that open source developers work legamente with Microsoft directly, there is probably a process of legal supervision that is not suitable for the agility of open source." "In addition, accept opened as a contribution, and external authoring, source code could be problematic".
 


The truth is that this approach to linux can be much further the interests of microsoft, because according to the latest analysis in terms of operating systems, Windows has grown.
  To the contrary of what had been happening since the beginning of 2012, all users of Microsoft has undergone a proportional growth that has lost Mac OS X and Linux.



Directly responsible for this improvement of Microsoft as well as the release of the version Windows 8 beta any user interested during the last days of February, is the surprising growth of Windows XP that nearly 11 years since your release achieves improve a 1.5% in the last month. This improvement in Windows XP coincides with the recent announcement of Microsoft encouraging its users to upgrade to Windows 7 while also recalling that they still missing two years for the completion of its support until April 2014.
 

Linux for its part, after several months followed by growth (Jun 2011 - January 2012) and despite the good work and competitiveness maintained by the initiatives as Cannonical, Linux Mint or Fedora, again losing users at a near 1% percentage with regard to desktop operating systems market.
Microsoft expands into


Desktop operating systems ranking March 2012
Netmarketshare

                  Windows: 92.48%
                  Mac: 6.54%
                  Linux: 0.98%

Ranking OS desktop versions

                  Windows XP: 46.86%
                  Windows 7: 37.54%
                  Windows Vista: 7.65%
                  Mac OS X 10.6: 2.79%
                  Mac OS X 10.7: 2.59%
                  Linux: 0.98%
                  Mac OS X 10.5: 0.89%

Ranking mobile operating systems March 2012

                  iOS: 59.87%
                  Android: 18.66%
                  Java ME: 15.10%
                  Symbian: 2.77%
                  BlackBerry: 2.21%