Microsoft Sponsors Linux Foundation Event

darthcamaro writes "There was a time when the Linux Foundation wouldn't take money from Microsoft. That time is not today — Microsoft is listed as a Gold Sponsor of the LinuxCon Europe event, paying $20,000 for the privilege and also getting a guaranteed speaking slot as a result."

Comments

Why all the corporate sponsorship press?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Hey SlashDot, how about some "News for Nerds" sometime soon? This is two days in a row with an announcement about some large corporate entity throwing money into a marketing pot. If we wanted this kind of news, we'd be on the Businessweek site right now.

Just in case anyone doesn't understand

[Bruce Perens]

Linux Foundation is an organization of really large businesses. They currently pay the salary of Linux Torvalds and a handful of other programmers, but they are first and foremost an organization of really large businesses. Many of the businesses are not particularly friendly to Linux. Most of them don't deserve your trust. A number of them produce proprietary drivers which run in the kernel, against the licensing of Linux itself.

Re:Just in case anyone doesn't understand

[Bruce Perens]

Hi Chibi Merrow,

Why are proprietary drivers the only way you can get your work done? I'm not asking you so much as I am asking you to tell me why it happened to you. It's probably going to be something like company X wouldn't make open drivers. And then tell me if you really think that company X is protecting some precious intellectual property and if they would actually be damaged if it was released as Open Source.

Very often the driver only works on their specific hardware, and there isn't really any chance of financial damage from opening the driver.