On 04/05/2012 08:14 AM, Mayuresh wrote: > You might patch a thing n times just because it broke n times, does not > make you a better contributor than someone who contributed fewer times > though with better quality and functionality. Just the count is not a > measure of intent.
Patching something n number of times doesn't increase code count. For most part, the hyper-v driver code they contributed is now much less lines of code due to the amount of revisions that has happened in the staging area over the last several months. This is quite common for drivers written in house by commercial organizations contributing newly to Linux kernel. So instead of a inflated count, what you are actually seeing is a lowered count. > They are unlikely to be doing it to help Linux/OSS prosper or something. > They contributed to areas where they had a business interest. Hence I > called it an illusion. I don't think calling it illusion is appropriate. All commercial vendors who contribute to Linux, do it out of a business interest. It is not a charity or donation. In the case of Microsoft, their primary work is adding Hyper-V driver to support Linux systems as a guest in their virtualization platform and since the kernel is GPL, they are legally required to publish patches anyway and merging them does make it easier to use their solutions. Does it advance their own interests? Absolutely. Does it benefit Linux on the whole? Yes, to the extend any driver benefits Linux. It is rather similar to say driver support that HP or Broadcom contributes because it sells their hardware more. Having said that, I don't expect them to show up high in the stats in the upcoming years because maintenance work in such drivers isn't that high typically. What it does, is a change in approach within MS in some ways and that there is demand from MS customers who want to run Linux as a guest. Rahul _______________________________________ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
