Porting software is not just copying the code. Popular software does in fact get ported. A good example of this is the Openmoko phones, which contains a lot of ported free software (e.g. FBReader, Midori and Pidgin). Porting non-free software however is impossible unless the developer chooses to do it.
Nvidia only needs to release the source code of one of their drivers (say a Windows driver), and the GNU/Linux developers would create a driver for them. That is how openChrome was born (VIA only provided irregular releases of the code but that was enough to create Unichrome which was forked into openChrome).
What I tried to explain was this:
1. If you use Windows all the hardware will be supported (usually) by proprietary drivers which will only be supported for at most a few years, so new features will not be added even if the hardware can support them. Some hardware is not supported at all or only partially supported on GNU/Linux by proprietary drivers, since the companies don't think it is worthwhile for them to make an effort to support GNU/Linux. These companies want the users to buy new supported hardware instead of adding support to existing hardware. This is part of the reason why I think proprietary drivers are bad.
2. If you use GNU/Linux and use hardware that is supported by free drivers, then chances are that newer common features (like connecting to an external monitor with a 16:9 resolution) will be implemented. This is one of the reasons why I think all drivers should be released under a free license.