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India Presses Microsoft For Windows Discount in Wake of Cyber Attacks (reuters.com)
India is pressing Microsoft to offer a sharply discounted one-time deal to the more than 50 million Windows users in the country so that they can upgrade to the latest Windows 10 operating system in the wake of ransomware attacks, Reuters reported Friday. From the article: Microsoft officials in India have "in principle agreed" to the request, Gulshan Rai, India's cyber security coordinator, told Reuters over the phone on Friday. If Microsoft agreed to such a discount, it could open up the global software giant to similar requests from around the world. Rai said the government was in talks with Microsoft management in India. It is not immediately clear whether any other countries were seeking similar deals.
India has had EVERY opportunity to get off of Microsoft's garbage platform. Superior, FREE alternatives have existed for decades now. But instead, they chose to steal and pirate Microsoft's proprietary software, and now they want a bail-out. This makes me sick. Fuck Gulshan Rai and all of the asshole Indians who refuse to switch to Free and open source software. People have worked damn hard to create these alternatives to proprietary software—often the reasoning being that it is more accessible to those in the third-world—yet it's easier for them to simply steal. India deserves all of the ransomware it gets. Pricks.
At least it is for Windows 7 and 8.x - Microsoft offers it free for those that use "accessibility tools" - in other words, if you upgrade, run the screen magnifier once, and you've met the legal requirements for the free upgrade.
All of the mechanisms are still in place to activate the latest (Creator's update) Windows 10 installs using Windows 7 or higher keys. They'd be hard pressed to change this, since many upgraders will not have a valid Windows 10 key if they had to move to a new or used replacement PC system.
Quite frankly, Microsoft isn't that concerned about consumers still getting a free upgrade; the bread and butter for Microsoft has always been licenses on new laptops and desktops and, of course, licenses to businesses. Microsoft actually wants users to migrate, for many reasons, most of which are good for consumers.
"I see your free operating system. And I raise you waiting two years then complaining the price your charging is too high"
Seriously, this is a typical Indian move.
I am pretty sure that it is something which is woven into their culture.
I have several India firms as clients. Typically they are serving as an OEM for a larger US or EU brand, but they are responsible for getting all of the certifications ahead of time.
So, we give our standard offer. They say, no no no, that is WAY too much. Way more than your competitors.
We say, what are you looking for?
They say, it must be at least 40% less than this.
We say... OK, we can do 30% less, but we will not offer any support. If you do not know how to fix something, or fill out some form, then it's not our problem.
They agree.
Then, they fuck everything and demand support and extra support. I forward them the earlier emails and reminding them they agreed to no support and tell them that I would be happy to send out a new offer to include support at our standard list price. They decline.
Then for the next project, they ask for an even bigger discount because the support last time was not good. Every..fucking...time.
You say that as a joke, but MS really doesn't mind that much.
Of course they'd prefer if you pay, but if you refuse to do that then their 2nd choice is that you pirate their software rather than using somebody else'. If they're not getting money from you either way, then they may as well at least get the vendor lock-in and other such intangible benefits.
And these days especially, they would MUCH rather you use a free (whether pirated or given) version of Win10 than previous versions of Windows. Again, they aren't getting money either way so the intangible benefits are more critical. Particularly the fact that they can issue security patches and try to reign in some of the bad press they always get that isn't really their fault. Of course they also (rightfully) get plenty of bad press for things that are their fault, but its pretty hard to blame them for getting hacked if you're using a 15 year old OS (and they're apparently still able and willing to issue patches for XP when things get really really bad as we've see over the past few weeks.)