Vole has already released  alpha versions of PowerShell for Linux and Mac OS X and given Powershell a new GitHub page. Punters can download software binaries of the software and the app’s source code.

The move follows the success of Vole’s outsourcing of its .NET programming frameworks in 2014.

It is all pretty clever. Microsoft has taken Windows skills and made them more marketable across a wider range of operating systems. Linux experts use it to get their paws on an additional set of tools which operate over a wider range of systems.

Jeffrey Snover, a Microsoft technical fellow and the architect of PowerShell, said the core engine and cmdlets will be the same across PowerShell on Windows, Linux and Mac. Some cmdlets that use Windows-only features won’t be available on other platforms, and PowerShell scripts written for Windows may have to be modified to work on Linux and Mac.

Snover said that Microsoft is still working on finalising some of PowerShell’s remote access capabilities on Linux. When it has finished admins can use PowerShell on Windows to remotely manage a fleet of Linux systems.

It will also work on AWS, meaning that AWS cmdlets for PowerShell will make it possible for users to administer services in the cloud. VMware has also partnered with Microsoft to release new cmdlets for PowerShell that work across platforms.