Regardless of the security and simplicity arguments made for and against Linux, there are some users who simply cannot switch to the free operating system due to legacy software requirements. That situation may soon improve, however. The WINE project has existed for fifteen years attempting to emulate the Windows API so applications can run natively on Linux without requiring a licensed copy of Windows. Many of the most demanding applications proved difficult to port, though, owing to undocumented APIs and the complexity of the underlying emulation code.

Google’s programmers are using their development time to improvements to the WINE codebase and have already made significant headway into porting difficult professional applications like Adobe’s Photoshop CS2. Public improvements to open source projects are common from Google as they have gained much acclaim in the past for the patches and upgrades provided to the MySQL project.