Although I know it's impossible to win a discussion with aseigo (I even wouldn't win them when I would write in my mother tongue) I try to ask some questions and show my point of view.
For me it looks like the fanatic linux guys (the one from the other side aren't better) are afraid of loosing something when a program is running on both os. But nobody could explain what they think they'll loose. You say when an app is available on windows too, they user never comes to the idea to switch to linux. I say - if the program is not available on windows, the user will never use it at all and also will never know that this program is available on linux.
Like you don't see a plan how the porting to windows can make the free os more attractive, I don't see a plan how you want to convince the windows users to switch to linux. Do you really think that creating nice programs and telling a windows user how good this program works on linux is the best way to make him switch to linux? You may say that he can use a live cd - but I don't think that using a live cd for a few hours is the right way to gain new users...
And you don't have to boggle from us - we don't use the win32 api more than you use the linux-kernel api. ;)
Maybe a sentence why I don't use linux as my primary platform. I really don't know why. I maybe easily could switch to linux. Nearly all programs I use (non of them is a kde app because it's currently not possible to use a kde app on windows...) are available on both platforms or have a (more or less equivalent) counterpart. It's just a matter of taste - and isn't this what foss stands for - having the opportunity to use what you want and don't get stuck to a specific operating system?
One note for Derek Kite: It's just stupid what you say. Either you use a framework and learn to use it (with all it advantages and disadvantages) or let it be. It's totally nonsense to blame a platform independent framework like Qt to not support all platofrm specific goodies.
