Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshJ  If you give them all the free apps on a non-free system, the non-free system will retain its dominance in the market. The only way to get real freedom to the masses in operating systems is by hurting Microsoft. Porting F/OSS code to Windows hurts the Free Software movement. |
I would actually argue the opposite - Microsoft reinvent pretty much every technology partly in order to minimise the contact that their customers have with rivals.
Ports of Free Software upset this by introducing MS customers that aren't UNIX-savvy to alternative products and ways of thinking, as well as allowing Free Software users to carry some of that with them in places where closed platforms are mandatory.
Every developer that deals with Subversion, MySQL, PHP etc. learns a little about Free Software and Open Source, and I suspect that the mass of clued-in people is partly what is forcing proprietary software vendors to change their policies and open up in unprecedented ways.
As other people have said, effectively trying to restrict or punish people for not agreeing with you also seems to contradict the ideal of freely sharing.