They are not porting any of the utilities, they are porting the entire
ubuntu environment, within which these programs can run.
As far as I understood, the news only is about command-line utilities. But
that would be even better if more free software (including those with GUIs)
would run on Windows. Again: in my opinion, a greater adoption of free
software (even on a proprietary operating system) looks positive to me.
And the news insists that nothing is ported: unmodified programs run on a
compatibility layer.
Why not port all of the relevant free programs for windows developers? If the
answer is that it is hard, just let them use GNU/Linux which is easy.
That does make Windows ports of free software programs bad. I agree it is a
lot of work that could be put into adding features, correcting bugs, etc. and
should not be high-priority. Anyway, I believe it is desirable to have free
software running on Windows.
The fact that most of the world uses windows should not justify porting our
entire 'operating system' to windows.
To some extent (again: I do not think it should be high-priority) it does:
that makes more users of free software and an easier transition to GNU/Linux.
By making it easy to use within Windows we are promoting continued use of
Windows. (...) This helps them use free software and helps them continue to
use nonfree software.
I disagree. And I am pretty sure facts are on my side: I believe most
GNU/Linux users discovered free software (Firefox, LibreOffice, Pidgin, GIMP,
Emacs, etc.) on Windows. That may even be how they ended up discovering the
free software movement, its philosophy, etc. and what motivated them to
reject proprietary software.
Open source is comfortable having free and nonfree software existing
side-by-side while the free software movement is not. It is hard to sell a
strict position, but that does not mean we should be less strict.
The objective is 100% freedom. But to reach 100% freedom, a transition phase
is required. The intermediate state is not "acceptable": the objective has
not been reached. But it is required. If you wipe out a user's disk to
install free software she does not know, you can be sure she will not be able
to properly work and will be back to her proprietary operating system in no
time. And she will hate free software. That is particularly true for
information systems in companies/institutions.
