MSFT and Linux

Microsoft made a splash in the tech industry on Wednesday when it announced that it had joined the Linux Foundation as a platinum member. While the move felt like a welcome extension of the tech giant's open source strategy to some, others saw it as a threat to Linux.

Microsoft's addition to the foundation was a positive step for the open-source community overall, Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, said in an interview. In his view, adding Microsoft as a foundation member is an important move to further the Linux Foundation's mission, "which is to create the greatest shared technology asset in history."

"I think there is a burden on the broader open-source community — again, I think that there's a healthy anti-establishment sensibility — but there's the act of being the anti-movement, the rebel movement, and there's the act of being the mainstream movement. And to be in the mainstream does require broadening your tent and bringing as many people into that tent as possible."

The two organizations have been working together for a while. The first public partnership between the foundation and Microsoft appeared last year, when they announced a certification for running Linux on Azure.