this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
1414 points (93.0% liked)
linuxmemes
21378 readers
1480 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry will not be tolerated.
- These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't fork-bomb your computer.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is just speculation, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft stopped caring about people pirating windows and using licences they shouldn't have. They would rather you use windows as a pirate than not use windows at all.
To anyone downvoting the comment above, you can use windows indefinitely without a key. The only thing that happens is you get some text on the screen (that sometimes goes away for no reason) and you can't change the background. They don't give two f's. They could easily block keys / stop them from working if misused, but they don't care. Same reason why every laptop comes with a license. They put it there because it costs them nothing. They'd rather have market share, than get money upfront. They probably make bank on other things (i.e. the analytics, ads, etc)
Been like that since the 90s really. Microsoft's "secret sauce" is that they never gave a shit about the end users.
They make bank by courting enterprise users: Big companies with hundreds of employees, OEMs, governments, schools, etc.
In recent times they found a way to double-dip by putting in telemetry/data collection/ads/adware -- But before that they just didn't care.
It does help that windows makes the user develop learned helplessness and so by the time they are getting their own computer, they'll want to stay in the windows environment. So they also get the inflated marketshare, which feeds back into their pitch when they are courting those enterprises.
It's true. But why would anyone buy an illegal key if they can activate Windows for free?