This is absolutely the coolest Open Source thing, by far, this month. In fact, it might be the coolest thing I’ve seen in a couple of months. Jon Lech Johansen (you might remember him as the guy who largely made it possible to watch those pesky little DVDs that you paid good money for on the Operating System you choose) has done it again.

Apparently, my head has been in the sand for the last several months, since SharpMusique is a (very nicely done!) C# port of the python-based PyMusique application. What is PyMusique (and subsequently SharpMusique), you ask? Why, nothing more than a free working Open Source interface to Apple’s iTunes store!!!

Does it work? Absolutely!! And well!! And thanks to Novell/Miguel/countless thousands of Mono developers, this C# port (SharpMusique) runs perfectly well on Linux!

What does all this mean? Well, I can tell you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that Apple is getting robbed or anything. All this interface does is allow me to browse Apple’s iTunes store from Linux, log in, search for music, purchase and download songs, and… well, that’s it. And, as a matter of fact, I did purchase a $.99 song tonight–Kutless – Strong Tower – Take Me In, from Apple’s iTunes store, through the SharpMusique application, on Linux. And, I happen to think that this is how it should be. In fact, I’d be quite happy running Apple’s own iTunes application in Linux, if they’d just provide me one.

But they don’t.

And it’s satisfying that, for the time being, until Apple figures out how to get this to not work anymore, I can choose to browse their iTunes store from Linux, and even *gasp* purchase their music. If I choose to.

It’s nice having a choice. =:)