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Microsoft to Support Linux in Virtual Server
zaxios writes "Techworld is reporting that Microsoft has announced support for running Linux on their virtualization software, Virtual Server 2005. From the article: '[Microsoft] can't compete against VMware without support for other operating systems.' Perhaps the significance of this is that Microsoft has acknowledged Linux as an OS people might want to use, which seems an upgrade from its previous status as a communist cancer."
You need to keep in mind that Microsoft is a very large company and each department is so large that it is almost like a company within its self. So if it is bad for the Windows Server team that the Virtual Server team has done this, well too bad. The Virtual Server team needs to keep their product competitive and they are just telling it as it is; they are an x86 system virtualizer and need to support popular x86 platforms, if they didn't then they deserve to die off.
This is no different than when Microsoft released an Office for Mac. Naturally the Windows platform teams and managers didn't much care for that but Office saw it as an opportunity. The people doing the name calling are the ones within Microsoft that are competing against Linux not the ones that couldn't care less either way or want to port their projects to Linux to improve their customer base.
In my opinion, when we see a dominant Linux platform (e.g. desktop environment, tool set etc) then we will also see a copy of Microsoft Office released. Microsoft will follow the market with most of its products.
It's not that he's given up fighting Linux, it's just that they are trying to make the best possible product, and what good is VirtualServer 2005 if it doesn't support *nix? Seriously, what other operating system are you going to run on x86 that isn't open source or a derivative of the "communist" OS?