In a recent discussion on the Slashdot web site, free software users and advocates raised the question of whether the KDE project should be ported to the Microsoft Windows platform. Advocates for porting the KDE desktop environment made the argument that porting KDE to Windows would enable a new population of users to experience the software and that this exposure would entice these new users to seek out and adopt free software for use in their daily computing lives. Opponents of porting KDE believe that since Microsoft controls the underlying platform, software like KDE will never be able to compete on a fair playing field and that the time and effort spent in porting the software would be wasted when the vendor eventually decided to exclude free software competitors. While some free software advocates are right to be concerned, current realities support the position that free software on non-free platforms should be promoted.

Motives for developing free software can be divided into ideological and pragmatic groups

Before becoming heavily involved in the dispute, one must pay attention to the motivations of those producing and using free software. Some developers approach free software development from a point of view of promoting fundamental rights. Richard Stallman, of the GNU Project, is the most well known member of this group, with his philosophies on software development and use. This group believes that there are fundamental rights that grant software users the freedom to modify the software they use to better serve their needs and that users should possess the freedoms to share and distribute these changes. Unrestricted access to source code is central to this philosophy and closed-source software with restrictions on copying and distribution is an anathema to those holding these views. Members of this group produce free software as a means to establishing alternatives to the non-free platforms and applications.

In contrast to the ideologically-driven developers, another group produces free software for pragmatic reasons. These pragmatic developers are less interested in software politics and are more interested in using the free software development model and free software licenses to achieve a practical goal of their own - such as selling services, using free software as a competitive tool in the marketplace, or simply making the software available to the widest user base possible. Many adopt the free software development model in order to build a community and promote collaboration and they solicit contributions from the community to drive further development and maintain users’ interest in the software.

While there are other motives for developing free software, most can be divided into ideological and pragmatic groups. The people who primarily view free software as a philosophical movement are ideological participants, while those who release free software as a means to another end are pragmatic participants. Despite these fundamental differences, both camps benefit when free software is available on both free and non-free platforms.

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

While pragmatic developers do not object to developing free software for non-free platforms, ideological developers often do. Ideological participants have a strong interest in the creation of an environment with complete freedom, so that users can utilize free software in all facets of their computing lives. To accomplish this goal, ideological participants believe that it is advantageous if the free platform grew and innovated independently of non-free platforms. In their view, it makes sense for the free software platform to evolve into a distinct environment that has its own advantages, not found in non-free platforms. Porting free software to non-free platforms minimizes the distinction between free and non-free platforms and the presence of free software functionality on non-free platforms provides less of an incentive for users to switch.

By any reasonable measure, the ideological developers have already achieved a remarkable goal. Using a free Unix operating system with software such as OpenOffice.org, the Mozilla internet browsers, and free software media players, an ideological user can go through their everyday tasks without using any non-free software.

Will the KOffice suite be a competitor to OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office?

However, when interacting with non-ideological users, a pure free software platform is not always sufficient. Some web sites use non-free technologies such as Flash. Document exchange is troublesome as non-free office formats complicate interoperability with free software. New Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies exclude free media software.

While ideological developers have succeeded in creating a pure free software platform, they now face a much more insurmountable problem—motivating non-ideological users to exclusively adopt free software. While free software use has grown greatly in recent years, the market of non-free software and platforms still dwarfs that of free software. Ideological developers prefer a computing landscape where all layers of the computing platform are free, but they face an uphill battle in convincing non-ideological users to abandon their non-free software. While ideological users were patient and contributed time and effort to help free software reach its current level of functionality, the non-ideological user values current availability and ease-of-use over philosophical purity. Furthermore, there are no free software applications approaching the level of functionality and polish found in some popular non-free software (such as Quicken and Photoshop), and non-ideological users will not abandon their non-free platforms while suitable free software replacements are absent.

While ideological developers have succeeded in creating a pure free software platform, they now face a much more insurmountable problem—motivating non-ideological users to exclusively adopt free software

Thus ideological users are unable to convert the multitudes of non-free software users, but they benefit every time their non-ideological counterparts use free software. Each Windows or Mac OS X user that installs FireFox and browses the web using a free browser is one less user that web sites can target with non-free technologies such as ActiveX.

Firefox is winning the hearts and minds of Mac and Windows users everywhere

A bank website can afford to ignore the one percent of their clients who are pure free software users, but they cannot afford to ignore twenty percent of their clients who are on non-free software platforms using free software web browsers. Ideological users benefit similarly when more users adopt free office suites instead of Microsoft Office. Proponents of pure free software stacks benefit from network effects each time a user of a non-free platform adopts a free replacement for a non-free application.

In addition to their own personal use, ideological users further benefit from free software adoption when promoting and educating users about freedom and software. Trying to make a case that a Windows XP user should switch to a free browser is difficult if there is no way to easily demonstrate such a browser on a non-free platform. It is difficult to sell the idea that KDE is a wonderful desktop environment when the user is required to install Linux to try it out. In this situation, the availability of free software on non-free platforms serves as an advertisement that free software is of high quality and that it can replace non-free applications.