This means that if all piracy was to disappear the number of Linux users would increase by 50%. While that’s an impressive number, the relative impact is modest. In most countries Linux is used by roughly 1% of desktop users, which would increase to 1.5%.

Well, if you're gonna make that argument, you might as well also say that if Windows were free Linux would disappear. But I'll bet you aren't going to say that.

“I find that an increase in the piracy rate by 1% in a country is expected reduce the user share of Linux by around 0.5%. Although there is some level of uncertainty on the exact estimate, the direction is negative with a high level of statistical certainty,” Gramstad explains to TorrentFreak.

THAT sounds like a much more factually defensible statement. The more effectively"free" alternatives to actually free software there is, the less penetration the actually free software has.