The Unintended Consequences of Free Windows 10 For Everyone

Ammalgam writes: Microsoft seems to be really driven to pushing over a billion people to the new Windows 10 platform as soon as humanly possible. In the latest push to make this happen, the company has basically decided that (somewhat off the record), pirates can come in the side door and it really doesn't matter what the state of their Windows license is, they can get Windows 10 for free. To get deep into the weeds on how this is happening, you have to read Ed Bott's excellent article on ZDNET – "With a nod and a wink, Microsoft gives away Windows 10 to anyone who asks." However, on Windows10update.com, Onuora Amobi asks whether the cost benefit analysis has been done and if this deluge of new members will have a detrimental effect on the Windows Insider Program.

Comments

But will it be free?

[Anonymous Coward]

John Thompson, the guy that runs Microsoft, said it will not. He hinted that it will be subscription only. We need to answer that question first before going off on tangents about the effect of something we're not sure will happen.

Re:But will it be free?

[King_TJ]

You know... it's funny because a few weeks ago, I made the point on Slashdot that I, too, believed Windows 10 was Microsoft's vehicle for moving people to a subscription model for their OS upgrades. But I was immediately modded down as a troll.

I have lots of reasons to believe this is so, though - including attending a conference a few months ago where several Microsoft business sales reps were in attendance. They made it clear that moving forward, Microsoft is strongly focused on serving everything to you via the Cloud. They made the off-handed comment that the next release of Windows Server will likely be the last one you can actually buy to install on your own hardware. The future, according to them, lies in subscribing to everything hosted on Microsoft's Azure. You need a print and file server? Fine ... spin a new one up on Azure and configure as needed, and pay the monthly fee to keep it going as long as you need it. Same for SQL, SharePoint Server and more. And just the other day, they announced an internal restructuring of Microsoft's CRM/ERP software division (Great Plains Accounting software, basically) so it will go under their division doing Enterprise Cloud computing initiatives.

It sounds to me like Win 10 puts the "mechanism" on everyone's computer that will allow MS to push future OS updates to it via the Internet ... not just patches or "Service Packs", but complete new versions of the OS. They don't HAVE to do things that way, obviously ... but it sets the stage for a change to that deployment method.

Re:WindowsME 2.0

[FlyHelicopters]

For me even Windows 8.1 is not stable. I do a dism and a WindowsUPDATE FIXIT every freaking month! Literally after 2 years 8.1 still corrupts itself with updates.

The problem might well be on your end then...

I have Windows 8.1 on many computers, it is solid as a rock, I have no complaints.

My main work machine is still on 7, only because I have it setup just so and I'm happy with it, but all my secondary machines have 8.1 on them, with a single XP box for testing purposes.

10 is just fine, relax...

Re:WindowsME 2.0

[mykepredko]

Billy,

Aren't your comments the same sage advice that should be used with each new version of Windows?

I am doing 95% of my development work on Win7 simply because, like you, I believe it's the best version of Windows available for use right now (I always liked the stability of Win2k), but I just did a Google search on "Initial Windows 7 bugs" and there are numerous problems (including incomplete installations, unable to access optical media, theme change problems, etc.) all with the recommendation to wait a year+ until it gets stable.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has the mindset to get it out and then fix the problems (with some bean-counter probably saying that they should only spend money/resources on the problems that users actually care about) instead of doing it right before shipping.

Re:I wonder...

[SuricouRaven]

We've been here before: When Vista game out it immediately got a reputation as such a worthless, buggy, unstable, over-ornate piece of utter rubbish that very few people got it - and demand was so low that many OEMs were advertising 'comes with Windows XP' as a feature. Vista became the skipped version, as people held off on upgrading until seven game out. We seem to be in the same situation with windows eight: It's got such a poor image already for a hellish interface that everyone sensible has skipped it, and will go straight from seven to ten.

Re:there's no subscription in the sense you think.

[Anonymous Coward]

he's senile

That's scary since Obama almost appointed Secretary of Commerce. Source:

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/27/nation/na-commerce-secretary27

Imagine a Secretary of Commerce that communicates so poorly and with so many contradictions. My wife is a Principal Strategist with Microsoft for Azure and Office365, and even she doesn't know if Ten will be free and/or require a subscription after one year. She should know because it greatly affects their planning.

Except they haven't...

[Junta]

They were cagey and had some misspeaks along the way, but the final picture is shaping up: Only those who are currently entitled to a currently supported Windows release level product license are entitled to Windows 10. Full stop. In short, it seems they are trying to rework their product development scheme to simplify their offering and reduce their exposure on support lifecycles while redefining the consumer space to enable them to keep up with their competition timelines on more equal footing (all the 'supported' desktop/mobile platforms abandon users pretty quick compared to microsoft).

The initial confusion around pirated copies: only genuine copies get to be 'genuine' Windows 10 versions. Basically the statement about update turns out to be a non-statement, though they allude to some 'attractive' offer.

The recent confusion that any Windows 10 previewer gets it for free: "It’s important to note that only people running Genuine Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 can upgrade to Windows 10 as part of the free upgrade offer." They edited the blog post to basically say 'no you are not entitled to a free copy just because you ran Windows 10 during preview".

So that's the strictly legal side. From a technical perspective, I wager that blog post hints at the reality that preview users will be able to get 10 for free fully activated without MS being the wiser, just without legal entitlement to do so.

I think if MS published numbers on Windows revenue from system vendors versus retail sales, we'd see that retail sales of Windows is a drop in the bucket. It seems entirely likely that the retail pricing is like list price of a vehicle: it's there to make you feel like you are getting a better deal when it gets 'included' with a device. All these shenanigans that let determined illegitimate users run Windows 'Genuine' are not worth addressing, because the opportunity cost is just not there in any realistic view of the world. They can selectively audit folks that *would* represent an opportunity cost and that threat keeps the viable revenue stream running from the world that actually licenses Windows in significant volumes: OEMs and corporate users. Yet they do make those people go through shenanigans so there can be no mistake, that someone is knowingly violating their agreements and that is not ok, so you better buy a copy of windows, or just give a little extra money to an MS partner and get new hardware while they are at it.

Of course the reason that the shenigans work is that MS licensing/'genuine' program is so convoluted, there are several scenarios and times when MS has no hope of masking illegitimate users without hitting some legitimate users. For example, in the 'Insider' case, it's probably the case that MS won't be able to stop a non-entitled user without also screwing over a Windows 7+ user that replaced their Windows 7+ platform with Windows 10 preview, probably losing the ability to prove to installer/activation servers they once had Windows 7+ genuine. Or maybe they could, but would require them to reinstall Windows 7/8/8.1 before update to Windows 10, which would just blemish their image just to keep it out of the hands of some people who weren't going to be giving MS money by any stretch.