Users want something that works and is cheap. And that may be true. But that was also true of the Betamax video tape format, and look what happened to it. Because VHS benefited by the fact the machines to play these tapes were more readily available and cheaper, Betamax got stomped. Developers mistakenly and vindictively view this phenomenon as a result of users being stupid.
Users are smart.
But even in a free software world, the free market mentality is going to prevail. It's won't be the best product that wins, necessarily, but rather the fastest or strongest to market. I think it has to be KDE, though I will readily admit this is just a feel, not actual numbers. Corel Linux, just to name a few. Red Hat seems to be the only big purveyor of Gnome right now, which means that any new Linux users are likely going to see KDE first.