It's been a long, drawn out, brutal battle on the IT frontlines. Skirmishes can happen anywhere, at random -- in the server room, the board room, the cafeteria, or even, tragically, in civilian populated areas like pubs, restaurants, homes and big box electronics stores. The Mac and Windows battlefront consumes the resources of many foot soldiers, but the biggest, bloodiest conflicts involve the elite, highly trained IT commandos, who must be diplomats as well as fighters, and integrate a number of platforms across a single network.

Overly dramatic? Perhaps, but depending on your work environment and how quirky your mixed network is to configure, maybe not by much. There are several utilities available to promote diplomacy and peaceful interaction between machines in a mixed network. Likewise Software offers its open source Likewise integration applications to keep the peace -- and preserve platform equality and rights -- in a mixed network setting.

The OS Wars are frustrating and costly, but can be resolved with less heartache and far fewer casualties than other conflicts. This is why Likewise is promoting platform peace through t-shirt sales, with the proceeds going to charities supporting the civilian and military casualties of real wars.