Why Wine is Important!

Quoting:I guess some people who really want people to use open source software (because of ethical values) might possibly not want people to use Wine on Linux because the chances are that people who are using wine on Linux will use it to run proprietary software. But let me assure those people, this is the long term solution. Wine will get people 'ver the hump' as it were using Linux but after a while those people would hopefully start using FOSS/Linux native software more and more (even though they still use Wine.)

(emphasis added)

You might believe that providing the ability to run games, written for Windows, on Linux would be the best solution to attracting a larger user base. If only wine was easy to use and adapt to every Windows application program. The reality is that, eventually, these new "Linux users" would begin to expect and demand that hardware drivers written for Windows work on Linux, too.

"Well, if the Linux kernel cannot handle my webcam driver written for Windows, out of the box, then something is wrong with Linux." Because their Windows games will run correctly on Linux, users will expect more and more Windows compatibility from Linux. You end up on a fast-moving slippery slope where everything is adapted to work for Windows drivers, libraries and applications, rather than the native ones.

Quoting:Secondly I'd like to encourage companies such as Google to invest in wine. Believe me it is the key to making the use open source software grow.

The logic escapes me. How is encouraging the use of proprietary programs the key to increasing the use of FOSS?

Wine is good for what it is: a way to run some Windows programs in Linux without having to mess with a VM and an actual running instance of Windows OS. For large-scale installations, it might even be a good way to run legacy Windows applications without having to pay license fees to Microsoft, as long as Wine runs the application sufficiently well.

And "ethical values" shouldn't be an absolute bar against Wine or Windows programs; while there are some more extreme people who refuse to run anything proprietary and closed-source on their computer, there's lots of people who simply don't want to support a convicted monopolist and their poor excuse for an OS, though they'd still like to run closed-source software from other companies that unfortunately only runs on that OS. Then there's also people (which set partially overlaps with the previous set) who want or need to run some 3rd-party proprietary software, and have no problem paying money for that software, they just don't want to pay money for Windows that it's supposed to run on. Wine gives both these groups an alternative.

Unfortunately, Wine doesn't run everything perfectly, the way a VM usually does. However, a VM is more work (you actually have to install and use Windows inside it, and it doesn't interact with your Linux system very well, and really is like using a completely separate computer through VNC or similar), and requires you to pay for, install, and use Windows.

Quoting:The logic escapes me. How is encouraging the use of proprietary programs the key to increasing the use of FOSS?

That's easy: by providing a transition path. Suppose some company would like to dump Windows and its high ongoing licensing costs and support costs for its 1000 desktop systems, and move to Linux, but there's one custom or obscure program they absolutely require for their business and of course it only works in Windows. If it's easy for their IT people to instead install Wine and set that up to use this program seamlessly, then they can dump Windows altogether. The customer company wins, the 3rd-party application maker wins, FOSS wins, and Microsoft loses. If you're a FOSS purist, you might tell that company to just not use that program, but they'll tell you their business requires it and they'll just give up on FOSS as "unworkable" and go back to Windows. Or if they really like Linux that much, they might switch to it, but then install VMs on every computer, along with Windows licenses, just to run that one program, which is a lot of extra hassle, plus extra cost (VMware license, Windows license). There's not much economic benefit to running Linux if you still need to pay for Windows licenses, plus VMware licenses on top of that; in fact this just massively increases your support costs because now your IT department has to support 1 Linux PC plus 1 Windows PC for every worker (though the PCs are sharing the same hardware, which is the only savings here).