Mono on Linux

Yay!  Now we can develop Windows binaries from anywhere!  With Mono, you too can become a cross-platform programmer who sticks to one platform!

How is this productive?  A new de-facto standard developed for the Windows platform.  Why does everyone think this is such a great thing?  I remember a quote I read from Linus once which said something along the lines of, "When Microsoft starts writing programs for Linux, I'll know that I've won."  Well, how about all your Linux developers starting to write programs for Windows?!  That sounds like a great idea.  Then we can all rest assured that our blood, sweat, and tears going into developing a complete, feature rich F/OSS OS can be put onto a Microsoft Windows bandwagon and sold for millions of dollars.  Then maybe we can suck from the teet of M$ with their "developer" releases on the operating system that we wrote for them!  "Oh, good!  You mean I can buy my own code from you for only $200 a pop?!  Fabulous!  I'll take three!"

What the F*&%, OLPC?

So it's been released that OLPC has put an extensive amount of work into getting Windows XP to be bootable on their laptops.  Why?  Because it will "help drive competition" and Microsoft declared that they would either have to completely rewrite the bios for the machine or it would have to be written so Windows can boot from it.  This is bullshit.  The reason no one had built a port for OpenFirmware to Windows is because no one cared to run Windows on a machine that would be emphasizing F/OSS.  No one in the F/OSS community, so far as I know, would consider the assimilation a considerably forward-looking step for the NON-PROFIT organization which is supposed to be producing laptops for small children around the world.  Is this an effort to get information into small children's hands, or is it an effort to create a worldwide standard for communications and information technology?  Well, Microsoft had to be stopped in the United States due to monopolistic standings back in the 80's/90's, but can we stop them if they become the de-facto operating system worldwide?  I think not.