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Microsoft launches Linux Site

Microsoft launched a Web site to promote its Linux and open-source interoperability work, at the LinuxWorld exhibition in Boston.

Port 25 -- the site's named after the port used to listen for SMTP e-mail traffic -- is an attempt to promote conversations about Microsoft, open source, and how the twain might meet. It is aimed at creating community for businesses and developers working with mixed platforms, mainly Unix and Windows, and also Linux.

Sponsored by the Redmond, Wash. developer's Open Source Software Lab, the site will offer blogs and other content on the OSSL's efforts.

"This will be the place we not only blog, but also where we put analysis from our OSS labs and also where we discuss and show other parts of Microsoft that we think are just plain cool," wrote Bill Hilf, Open Source Software Lab head. He was recently promoted, to manage all of Microsoft's open-source compatibility efforts, including its controversial "Get the Facts anti-Linux campaign" and its "SharedSource initiative", in which the company allows developers access to some of its proprietary source code.

Opening-day content consisted of blogs by several Labs' researchers, and an article about the OSSL, which houses more than 300 servers running 15+ versions of Unix and 50 Linux distributions.

JupiterResearch analyst Joe Wilcox wrote on his Microsoft Monitor blog "Overall, I am impressed with the concept (caveat: assuming Microsoft sticks with it). If Get the Facts is a stick, Port 25 is the carrot."

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