Microsoft cleared to commit code to Apache
Submitted by srlinuxx on Tue, 10/14/2008 - 14:02.
Few will have noticed, but Microsoft's Jim Kellerman just announced that he and a Microsoft colleague "been cleared to contribute patches again" to Apache, and specifically to the Hadoop project.
This is great news for Microsoft, and I think for open source generally. It means that Microsoft just became an open-source insider and may find it more difficult to sling mud as an open-source outsider in the future.
Windows-only extensions?
They earn the freedom to add Windows-only extensions, just as they made patches for SQL Server around the time of their Apache announcement.