[MLB-WIRELESS] MicrosoftLinux

[Datec]

Maybe of interest to some. Found this of the ARNnet web site.





Linuxworld - Microsoft launches Linux site

Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service
06/04/2006 13:40:40
Microsoft on Thursday at LinuxWorld is expected to unveil a new Web site for
users to find information about its Linux and open-source interoperability
efforts, according to the executive in charge of those plans.
Bill Hilf, general manager of platform strategy group for Microsoft, will
discuss the site -- http://port25.technet.com -- during his keynote at the
conference in Boston Thursday morning. The site will also go live on
Thursday.
Hilf, who formerly worked on Linux deployments at IBM, has been overseeing
Microsoft's Linux and open-source interoperability lab at its Redmond,
Washington, campus for the past two years. He recently moved into a more
senior position, replacing Martin Taylor, who has moved over to the Windows
Live team. Hilf now is in charge of all of Microsoft's open-source
compatibility efforts, including its controversial Get the Facts anti-Linux
campaign and its SharedSource initiative, which is the company's own version
of allowing developers access to some of its proprietary source code.
The aim of the new Web site is to make Microsoft's efforts to ensure its
proprietary systems interoperate with open-source software, including Linux,
are transparent. The company also is encouraging advice about how to advance
these goals, Hilf said.
"It's going to be the interface to all of the open-source lab work Microsoft
does, where a variety of people blog -- including myself and others on my
team," he said. "People in the community also can provide feedback and give
us ideas for better interoperability."
Even the site's name reflects this notion of an open channel of
communication, Hilf said. Port 25 is the server port that sends and receives
e-mail on a server, thus facilitating two-way communication, he said.
In the past several years, Microsoft has appeared to become more open-source
friendly, but mainly from a market perspective. Without planning to support
open source itself as a strategy, the company has realized that Linux and
other open-source software is here to stay. From a business perspective,
it's important that Microsoft technology can coexist peacefully in the same
network with those products, Hilf said.
"The great thing is that as a market we've gotten past the David and Goliath
stuff," he said. "The reality is that customers run different technologies.
... We're still a commercial software company, but in some cases people want
to run Linux, want to run Windows virtualized, want to manage Linux using
[Microsoft products]. In those situations we can find a way to
interoperate."
To that end, Microsoft earlier this week at LinuxWorld released Virtual
Server 2005 R2, the latest version of its virtualization environment for
Windows that

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.5/301 - Release Date: 4/04/2006
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wireless.org.au/pipermail/melbwireless/attachments/20060407/ea2e174c/attachment.html>