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Red Hat Wants Xen In Linux Kernel

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the ground-control-to-kernel-tom dept.

DIY News writes "Red Hat is aggressively pushing to get Xen virtualization technology included in the Linux kernel as quickly as possible. This move comes as Microsoft is pushing its own virtualization products and recently relaxed some of its licensing requirements around Windows Server 2003 to facilitate more pervasive adoption and use of those technologies."

8 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Aggressively pushing? by gringer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "My goal is to get this done in the most collaborative way possible with anyone in the community who wants to participate," Stevens said, adding that Red Hat is committed to putting on this project enough of its staff who have the technical knowledge necessary to get the work done.

    Perhaps it's only me, but this doesn't sound aggressive; this sounds friendly and cooperative.

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    Ask me about repetitive DNA
    1. Re:Aggressively pushing? by bcmm · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't think it meant "aggressive towards the open source community". It's Microsoft they'll be competing with, and it seems that it's going to be Linux, rather than just Red Hat, against them.

      So, they're "aggressively" pushing Linux instead of Windows as a virtualisation host OS. Six staff members hired to work solely on integrating it into the mainstream kernel is fairly aggressive (toward MS), I would say, as it could lose them a major new market.

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      # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
      Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  2. Forking? by Lardmonster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why don't they fork? Or just build and rpm their own kernel, like they did with GCC 2.96?

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    The more advanced the technology, the more open it is to primitive attack
  3. Sun could be in RedHat's crosshairs by Zugot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sun can do this now with Solaris 10. Virtualization is a cool technology, and everyone in this space seems to be heading there.

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    -- Bryan
  4. Re:The irony by drsmithy · · Score: 4, Insightful
    [...] so whilst Gates/Balmer spout off about how evil open source is [...]

    No, both are quite specific it's the *GPL* they don't like, not Open Source in general.

  5. It's not personal, it's just marketing by FishandChips · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Slashdot summary is a bit misleading. What the article says is that Andrew Morton has been expecting a kernel submission for Xen for quite some time now but a) has yet to receive it, and b) needs to go through the usual process with other "stakeholders" before any incorporation. Later the article quotes the Xen folks themselves who point out that "feature creep" and the need to generally get things really solid and stable has made everything take a little longer.

    What the article actually seems to be saying - it uses the word "agressive" a lot as if this was some kind of virtue - is that Red Hat has a new senior honcho who'd like to make his mark. The issue of incorporating virtualization technologies into the Linux kernel is taken as a given by all parties. Which is hardly news. Chalk one up to the Red Hat marketing department for a nicely planted "news" story about their increased investment in the area (new hires, etc.), perhaps.

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  6. Re:The irony by photon317 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For the exact same reasons that I prefer the GPL to every other open source license. If you release code under a BSD-ish license, Microsoft can co-opt your work into a proprietary product directly without playing the same open source game that you are.

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  7. Of course by RandomPrecision · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In desiring to put Xen in the kernel, they have already failed.