Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users this summer,
but Microsoft is also extending its offer to software pirates. “We are
upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10,”
says Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s Windows chief, in an interview with Reuters.
The move means that thousands, perhaps millions, of machines will get a
free copy of Windows 10 even if a license has not been properly
acquired. While the Reuters report is focused on China, it’s not
immediately clear if this extends to other regions, but Myerson’s “all
qualified PCs” appears to suggest so. The Verge has reached out to Microsoft to clarify.
Microsoft
has a long history of attempts to thwart software piracy. Windows XP
was the company’s first operating system to introduce software
activation to verify license keys, but it was quickly defeated using a
corporate license key that many pirates shared on the internet back in
2001. Software activation has evolved throughout various versions of
Windows, but pirates have largely managed to bypass it each time. While
Microsoft’s plan might seem like letting software pirates go free,
studies have found that in a lot of cases pirated Windows licenses are
installed on new machines without customers even knowing they have an
illegal copy. Microsoft has tried various methods to encourage those
customers to return their machines or seek out a legal copy, but it’s
headache and a bad experience of Windows itself if that’s the first
thing you have to deal with in certain regions.
Windows software piracy is no small feat, so Microsoft’s move is surprising and meaningful. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed
in 2011 that only one customer in every 10 is actually paying for
Microsoft software in China, and he joined President Obama and other
business leaders to highlight the issues. Microsoft has also continually highlighted the financial impact of software piracy, but it continues to be a problem in Brazil, Russia, India, and China.
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