Love your "totally unscientific" proof.
But don't give ideas of demonstration to Microsoft please... :p

There's no legal issue; you don't need to decompile software. For a few reasons:
1. Any game that runs in DosBox on Windows is compatible with DosBox on Linux with no modification. (Unless GOG has been adding special features to the Windows DosBox that haven't transferred across to Linux or something)
2. A lot of older Windows games run using Wine, a Windows compatibility layer. Many software companies (Including Google) have been using it to release Linux "ports" of their software. I've never heard of Microsoft bugging anyone about it, and I don't think they'd have any legal standing if they did.
3. Decompiling software to port it to another operating system is close to unheard of. It'd likely take way more time and resources than GoG has. There *would* be legal issues with it.
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Alas, Google is talking about using this on ARM-based netbooks. DosBox and Wine won't help much there, unless you get an x86 emulator running underneath them (which would be fairly slow on a netbook). Games which use interpreters such as SCUMM (think Monkey Island) should be able to run as long as the interpreter has a port (SCUMM runs on anything), but a fairly substantial amount of the GOG catalog won't be compatible.
Actually, I'm not even sure you'll be able to use anything but web applications in Chrome OS, so we may be further limited to browser games.
Edit: Well, ok. Maybe their deals with software houses are only good for selling stuff on Windows or something like that. I suppose there's probably non-technical legal issues attached to the thing.

The markets they are looking to get these netbooks into are not likely places anyone you know lives. They are talking about underdeveloped countries for these machines, not the "civilized world". In places like that, where the individual income is far lower than yours or mine (well, maybe not mine, currently unemployed), even the cheapest current netbook is far too expensive.

Oh yes the OLPC market is certainly a good target for this sort of thing

Good point, since linux has mostly gravitated towards the RPM style packages, it shouldn't be TOO hard to adapt the dosbox/scummvm games to install there as long as they can be made to be as compatible and simple to run as the windows analogue and don't rely on a dozen obscure dependant rpms.
Well thats just running the windows version, if it works then thats good for the linux user, if it doesn't then stiff
Running stuff NATIVELY in linux was what I was referring to and it would need a hell of a lot of work for far too small a market segment for it to be financially viable.

I wouldn't say that. There are just as many, if not more distros using the Debian package manager now (DEB packages), thanks to all the Ubuntu-based distros out there. Either way, it shouldn't be hard at all to create the packages, at least in terms of the ScummVM/DOSBox games. The only problem is, since there are different package managers out there for Linux with no clear standard, it might mean maintaining separate RPM, DEB and plain old tar.gz packages to cover every possible Linux configuration. That might be way more hassle than it is worth, for those few people who actually use Linux.

Probably the point is that there's not enough demand for linux stuff to justify diverting people to the job

Unfortunately, you are probably very right.

Well according to the all knowing and occasionally correct wikipedia, Linux variations acount for 1.2% of the market. By the look of that graph, it'd make more sense to support mac first.

Uhm, you know what? All this talking about FOSS OSes made me wanting to install and play with Ubuntu. I've got no reason to go for a deformed OS instead of a serious one after all, even if they are both free :-P

TBH after doing a little research and what has been said within this topic, it sounds like the OS is not really for gamers, just the curious or out of pocket.

Curses! Another cunning plan to see behind the scenes of GOG has been foiled!

Damn! And we were so close! We''ll have to try harder next time.

I hate to say it but its looking like we might have to resort to asking nicely...