Although DesdeLinux has excellent news about the Linux world, I sometimes explore other sources as well, such as Google News . Today I came across a curious news item in a newspaper from my country (Argentina) called Página 12. Part of it is as follows:
"Picasso and Rembrandt work for Linux"
The story of how Microsoft—Linux's main enemy for two decades— became one of the main contributors of code to the kernel is certainly worthy of a boost of pride for the open-source developer community. And how it became a lackluster sponsor of LinuxCon , the annual European Linux conference—which is being held in Barcelona this year—is quite entertaining.
Steve Ballmer, the company's current CEO, had said a few years earlier that "Linux was like cancer" and that it had to be eradicated. In 2009, however, Microsoft began collaborating on kernel code , but the relationship with the developers wasn't entirely positive, mainly because the code wasn't maintained as well as the Linux community expected.
These problems were "remedied," according to Greg Kroah-Hartman, one of the pioneers of Linux. The problems were similar to those faced by Android , whose modifications were implemented in Linux after being rejected for years. "They sold 100 million smartphones; they must have done something right ," Linus Torvalds remarked in his keynote address at the Fira Hotel in Barcelona.
Jim Zemlin recently wrote an article stating, “Welcome to the post-desktop era of Microsoft; you’ll find a very different world.” Zemlin wrote that “due to smartphones, tablets, and other personal computers, Microsoft’s presence fell dramatically by 30 percent in 2012.”
The article continues with an interview. You can read it at http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/cdigital/31-207688-2012-11-13.html
If I understand correctly , Microsoft is helping and even collaborating with the Kernel?
This is weird and I don't know whether to make me happy or cry. The truth is that it is good that leading software companies collaborate, but this could become, I don't know ... a little dangerous.
What do you think?