Microsoft has brought someone aboard to serve as its “Director of Linux Interoperability” and head up the Microsoft/Novell Interoperability Lab — and his name will be familiar to people in the open-source community.

In an e-mail late Thursday night, a Microsoft representative said the role will be filled by Tom Hanrahan, who was most recently the director of engineering at the Linux Foundation, the group created through the recent combination of the Free Standards Group and the Open Source Development Labs.

The news will no doubt have the open-source world buzzing Friday morning. Microsoft’s deal with Novell is controversial to begin with, largely because of the patent provisions. Hanrahan’s position will focus instead on the interoperability aspects of the deal. Microsoft and Novell say the lab will help companies run the rival Linux and Windows operating systems together within corporate systems.

But given all the scrutiny of the Novell agreement, Microsoft’s hiring of a Linux veteran for the role is likely to cause a stir, no matter the specifics of the job.

Prior to working at the OSDL and Linux Foundation, Hanrahan was a senior program manager at IBM’s Linux Technology Center in Beaverton, Ore., where his work included oversight of “many of IBM’s leading Linux kernel developers and sub-maintainers,” according to a past OSDL news release.

Source and More : http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com

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