Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for pirates as well as legitimate users

[PCGamesN]

[url]http://www.pcgamesn.com/windows-10-will-be-a-free-upgrade-for-pirates-as-well-as-legitimate-users[/url]

[CarrO]

Does this mean that a hypotethically pirated copy of windows becomes effectively genuine in all senses after the upgrade with no difference to a bought copy?

[Lordgeorge16]

So they're giving up, basically. This means the pirates win.

welp

[Kondor]

[QUOTE=maxolina;47350446]Does this mean that a hypotethically pirated copy of windows becomes effectively genuine in all senses after the upgrade with no difference to a bought copy?[/QUOTE]

yeah but i think this offer is only for the first year of release

[OzzyCockroach]

I'm going to laugh if this is actually just bait in order to catch/punish pirates

[brandonsh]

[QUOTE=OzzyCockroach;47350558]I'm going to laugh if this is actually just bait in order to catch/punish pirates[/QUOTE]

Doubt it. Free Windows will drive more users and developers to their App Store, making them $$$ in the process.

[CapsAdmin]

[QUOTE=brandonsh;47350853]Doubt it. Free Windows will drive more users and developers to their App Store, making them $$$ in the process.[/QUOTE]

Maybe they're also making a lot from having ads in the start menu.

[Awaken90125]

I thought this was for China only

[Levelog]

[QUOTE=Lordgeorge16;47350479]So they're giving up, basically. This means the pirates win.

welp[/QUOTE]

They're trying to eliminate piracy by attracting all users with a legitimate copy to make potential revenue on the app store. I don't see how this is letting the pirates win.

[Johnny on Flame]

[QUOTE=Lordgeorge16;47350479]So they're giving up, basically. This means the pirates win.

welp[/QUOTE]
Whenever someone pirates windows, you help microsoft hold a higher market share, making more and more things get developed with windows in mind.
If tools and others are made for windows, businesses are forced into using windows, OEMs will need to use windows, etc.
They're not giving up, they're being smart as fuck.

[editline]19th March 2015[/editline]

Also they want to make money off of services, rather than once-purchase licenses.

[Tamschi]

[QUOTE=JohnnyOnFlame;47354071]Whenever someone pirates windows, you help microsoft hold a higher market share, making more and more things get developed with windows in mind.
If tools and others are made for windows, businesses are forced into using windows, OEMs will need to use windows, etc.
They're not giving up, they're being smart as fuck.

[editline]19th March 2015[/editline]

Also they want to make money off of services, rather than once-purchase licenses.[/QUOTE]

At least they are pushing .NET heavily though and open-sourcing the core of the framework to also run on Linux with the same code base.

If you stick to not using super specific libraries like WPF, it's fairly trivial to simultaneously release to multiple platforms using the system.