"My role is not to exterminate the penguin," Microsoft's Bill Hilf said at the LinuxWorld tradeshow. "My role is to be very critical inside Microsoft, for our customers and with the open-source community."
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has set up an open source and Linux lab that helps the company improve the way its software works together with open-source applications. At the LinuxWorld tradeshow in San Francisco the program's director Bill Hilf demonstrated how his team has improved interoperability between Linux and Windows, and in the process hopes to drive some Unix and Linux business to the company. Working Together The conference session prior to the event was labeled as controversial because of Microsoft's position towards open source. "My role is not to exterminate the penguin," Hilf told delegates. "My role is to be very critical inside Microsoft, for our customers and with the open-source community." The lab uses about 300 desktop and server systems that run a series of operating systems, ranging from Unix to the recently launched Windows Vista beta 1. In getting all the machines to work and talk together, the team has solved several problems, said Milf. The team spent a lot of time improving how Linux systems can talk to Microsoft's Active Directory and finally settled with a third party application called Centrify. "Getting authentication to work correctly with active directory is not simple. It's often fragile and to do it in a broad way is a non-trivial, technical task," he admitted. Bug Finders The team, that is made up of Unix and Linux programmers and system administrators, will also submit bugs in open-source projects if they find them. They for instance dealt with a problem that prevented the Gaim unified instant messaging client from communication through the MSN network. The application allows users to access multiple instant messaging networks through a single application. Microsoft traditionally doesn't support unified messaging clients. "That might have been the first time that Microsoft ever helped someone else to talk to MSN," admitted Hilf. The open source group is also involved with upcoming Microsoft technologies that will help organization to migrate from Unix or Linux to Windows. The forthcoming R2 update of Windows Server 2003 for instance will contain a subsystem that allows the application to run applications that are written for Unix. The final version of the software is expected to be released later this year. Microsoft is also working on a technology dubbed MSH, codenamed Monad. The new scripting language allows Unix administrators to use Unix commands inside Windows, Hilf showed in a demonstration. Transferring Skills "One of the biggest problems people have with moving from Unix to Windows has not been that they don't like the price of Windows, the biggest problem is that they don't know what to do when they get there. They are unable to move their skills over when they get there." Monad last week gained instant notoriety after security vendor F-Secure signaled a first proof of concept virus of the application and mistakenly labeled it as the world's first virus for Windows Vista. Source: http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/45401.html <http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/45401.html> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/hYOolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe send a blank mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bdlug/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
