Microsoft to Add Hyper-V Drivers to Linux Kernel

As kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announces in his blog, Microsoft has today released Hyper-V drivers for Linux under GPLv2 and asked it to be included in the Linux kernel. Novell's Kroah-Hartman had been working with Microsoft in the context of the Linux Driver Project (LDP) and intends to add the drivers to the kernel drivers/staging/ tree created for LDP under his care.

The three device drivers include code required for Linux to run better as a guest system on a Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machine. In his announcement on LKML.org, Kroah-Hartman thanked a number of Microsoft colleagues for their achievement after a "long road" to get the driver code under GPLv2.

This step means that Microsoft now accepts GPL as a de facto valid license. Their official PressPass release also acknowledges their move as a "break from the ordinary."