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Regular Windows 10 Users Who Manually Look For Updates May End Up Downloading Beta Code, Microsoft Says (techspot.com)
In addition to relying on Windows Insiders, employees, and willing participants for testing updates, Microsoft is pushing patches before they are known to be stable to regular users too if they opt to click the "check for updates" button on their own, the company said. From a report: In a blog post by Michael Fortin, Corporate Vice President for Windows, it is made clear that home users are intentionally being given updates that are not necessarily ready for deployment. Many power users are familiar with Patch Tuesday. On the second Tuesday of each month, Microsoft pushes out a batch of updates at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time on this day containing security fixes, bug patches, and other non-security fixes. Updates pushed out as part of Patch Tuesday are known as "B" release since it happens during the second week of the month.
During the third and fourth weeks of the month are where things begin to get murky. Microsoft's "C" and "D" releases are considered previews for commercial customers and power users. No security fixes are a part of these updates, but for good reasoning. Microsoft has come out to directly say that some users are the guinea pigs for everyone else. In some fairness to Microsoft, C and D updates are typically only applied when a user manually checks for updates by clicking the button buried within Settings. However, if end users really wanted to be a part of testing the latest features, the Windows Insider Program is designed exactly for that purpose. Further reading: Windows 10's 'Check for updates' button may download beta code.
During the third and fourth weeks of the month are where things begin to get murky. Microsoft's "C" and "D" releases are considered previews for commercial customers and power users. No security fixes are a part of these updates, but for good reasoning. Microsoft has come out to directly say that some users are the guinea pigs for everyone else. In some fairness to Microsoft, C and D updates are typically only applied when a user manually checks for updates by clicking the button buried within Settings. However, if end users really wanted to be a part of testing the latest features, the Windows Insider Program is designed exactly for that purpose. Further reading: Windows 10's 'Check for updates' button may download beta code.
They've always used their customers as beta testers. That shit started at least as early as the MS-DOS days.
The parent post has major factual errors. As much as I would also deride Microsoft's behaviours as of late, they're not quite as horrifyingly bad as listed above. To address:
-Windows client has had versions above Professional since Vista over 10 years ago. These versions have always had extra capabilities such as DirectAccess VPN and BitLocker encryption. Enterprise/Ultimate features have occasionally drifted down to Professional over the releases since.
-Featureset in Professional is still far above Home, although Professional does share a lot of the "crap" that comes on a base install. Group Policy and its associated automation tools still provide all that is needed to disable or remove such unwanted features from Pro. The Enterprise-only policies are very much countable, and constitute a very small set of the policy template set (low single-digit percentage by quantity and any fairly weighted importance metric).
-Per-core licensing in Windows Server is a clusterfuck. No disagreement there. It's not exactly as you describe in the scenarios listed, but actually worse in a high-availability/clustered environment. The licensing model falls apart badly with how CPUs are scaling out in core counts (ie: Epyc/Rome 64-core single socket), and was obviously implemented as either a short-sighted cash grab, or a "fuck you, buy Azure" statement.
-CALs stink, but they're good for the whole environment for the CAL version and below. Server 2019 CALs are good for as many Server 2019 and below instances as the company has.
-KMS licensing has never required a dedicated server. It's a very lightweight role and can even run on a desktop (Windows Professional) if so chosen. Devices bound to KMS check in regularly with the KMS server, and self-deactivate if it can't be reached for a few months. Deactivated Office goes read-only, while deactivated Windows just nags for activation and locks out the controls for a few personal settings like the wallpaper. KMS is also deprecated in favour of Active Directory-Based Activation for Windows 8/Office 2013 and up. No special server or fancy DNS SRV records needed for ADBA, just a normal domain controller, plop in your license keys, and they'll be found by all systems on the domain. KMS/ADBA has also always used regular 25-character keys, although they did change it a couple years back that you have to request them personally whereas they used to be handed out automatically alongside MAK keys in the VLSC. A KMS server does require activation when registering new licenses, but can run fully isolated afterwards and will happily hand out as many licenses as you can ask for without talking to Microsoft ever again. This is why manual audits from Microsoft are still a thing.
-Group Policy and WSUS control over Windows Update in Professional provides more control now than was available at any earlier point in Windows' history. There's literally nothing extra available for Windows Update in the Enterprise/Education variant. You don't even need a Windows Server for the GPO controls - just run gpedit.msc locally, or install the RSAT tools and join your systems to a Samba domain, adjust to your heart's content. A basic deferral policy to lag security patches by a handful of days and major feature updates by a few months takes moments to configure, and avoids the worst impacts of Microsoft's buggy updates automatically. Go WSUS and approve/deny updates on a totally custom schedule with optional local patch caching to conserve bandwidth or allow Windows 10 systems to share patches amongst themselves based on subnet or other criteria. Modify behaviour of reboot nags/no-reboot time windows, etc. Update control in Home is truly gimped, but I can't bring myself to entirely agree that this is a bad thing given the sheer mass of totally unmaintained systems out there, and the shared nature of the Internet.