You know, OnLive reminds me of Sony's Remote Play. The difference is that when I play a game over Remote Play on my PSP is that I still own the game either in downloadable form or on physical media and if I can't play the game right now because of network conditions (that's been my only experience so far), I can always play it without any network issues at home when I get there. I think this is the best compromise that we're going to see on this type of technology for a long while. While it may reduce development costs, I just don't see it performing well enough to get anyone to actually use it.

Of course Novell bought Ximian before (not before/after) the MS deal for the express reason of acquiring a desktop and .NET company. They get someone that's worked on the desktop, and more specifically, the only company really pushing for MS interoperability through .NET at the time. It was years before the deal, btw. I would hardly call it right "before/after" in any sense of the word.

So, his company was bought before the deal, a years before the deal, his new overlords made a decision about cross-licensing patents and made a deal, and he's at fault? Regardless of what you think of the whole Mono project, you can't really blame someone that didn't have any part in the deal itself for the deal that was made. Novell didn't give him orders to make a deal, because he never made it. Other people at Novell did.

Now, there are a lot of reasons to dislike the Mono project. Legally, it's a bit scary. While I think it will probably be fine, I don't pretend that it's unrealistic for some people to be hesitant on or maybe dislike the direction of the project.