The wealth of legal DS "homebrew" apps includes a port of the Linux Operating System.

Nintendo has had its case against the Divineo group, a major trade supplier of the popular R4 and other flashcarts for the company's DS handheld system, dropped in a French court on Friday. The judge ruled that the devices open up the system to software development, and that Nintendo have deliberately been locking out developers from its consoles.

It was suggested by the court that Nintendo should open up its hardware platforms for development by anyone, much like Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Of course, this is a major blow to the company's anti-piracy efforts, from which they have every right to protect their business, but it does highlight the perfectly legitimate uses of these flash-based devices. If Nintendo added proper media support and completely opened up the DS to homebrew games developers, not only would they increase sales by increasing the usefulness of the system, but they'd also kill off the market for these "piracy-enabling" devices.

That's a win-win situation, I'd say.