Lennart Poettering, developer of such important Linux components as PulseAudio, Avahi and, in particular, systemd, left his previous employer, Red Hat. There are increasing signs that Poettering has switched to Microsoft. There he was able to work on systemd for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) environment.
Official announcements are still pending. However, Christian Brauner, for example, a Linux kernel and container developer (LXC, LXD) and himself employed at Microsoft, welcomes Poettering as a member of the same team. heise online’s queries about changing employers have so far not been confirmed by Poettering, Brauner or Microsoft.
Poettering would certainly be a win for Microsoft. The company provides initial support for Linux software with WSL. However, the project is not particularly advanced and has to deal with many limitations. For example, a user must be logged in to run software on WSL, which is quite suboptimal for services. Poettering could contribute his knowledge here and advance the development of a complete and independent subsystem.
With his projects like PulseAudio and systemd, Poettering has made a significant contribution to modernizing Linux systems, but is controversial, especially among Linux traditionalists.
(DMK)
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