A software company based in Redmond, Wash. has released 20,000 lines of code under GPLv2 for three Linux device drivers. Microsoft says its first open source Linux code contribution is designed to speed the performance of the operating system when it's run in a Hyper-V virtual machine.

Microsoft dropped a mini-bombshell on Monday, announcing that it is contributing thousands of lines of code for inclusion in Linux. But lest anyone think Microsoft suffered a massive head trauma over the weekend, the code it is releasing isn't really about helping Linux compete better with Microsoft. The drivers are really geared at making Windows a better host for Linux.

Less than a week after Linux kernel 2.6.31 was released, the kernel developers are beginning to submit changes and improvements across virtualization, power management, file systems and device driver code for the upcoming 2.6.32 version.

This saga started when one of the user's on the Vyatta forum inquired about supporting Hyper-V network driver in the Vyatta kernel. [...] The driver [initially] had both open-source components which were under GPL, and statically linked to several binary parts.

Microsoft was in violation of the GPL (General Public License) on the Hyper-V code it released to open source this week. After Redmond covered itself in glory by opening up the code, it now looks like it may have acted simply to head off any potentially embarrassing legal dispute over violation of the GPL. The rest was theater.

There has been a lot of talk about the Linux kernel and Open Source drivers this week. Most of it was about Microsoft that released drivers under the GPL V2 for inclusion in the Linux kernel. As pointed out by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols this was planned for a long time and will benefit Microsoft as much (if not more) than Linux.

Over the past few years more of the Linux graphics stack has moved within the Linux kernel so that there is finally a proper kernel memory management solution for the open-source graphics drivers and to also provide kernel mode-setting.

Enhancements to the ALSA code for HD audio codecs, a V4L/DVB driver for the Mantis TV chip, drivers for MSI laptops and drivers for newer AMD CPUs are just some of the improvements to Linux hardware support.

One long-running controversy in the open source community has to do with device drivers and whether binary modules (proprietary code provided by device manufacturers, such as Nvidia) should be allowed within the Linux kernel.