We have been talking quite a bit about Windows 10 as of late, and the last news claim even pirates will be able to upgrade to this new OS.
Tech giant Microsoft has gone on record explaining that they will allow users who pirated copies of Windows 7 and 8 to upgrade to Windows 10. Yet, it is unclear as of now what exactly they mean by that, because they obviously are still hoping to get them to pay. In declarations with The Verge the company explained that users with pirate copies and versions of Windows will still be labeled as pirates by the OS itself, but can update to the most recent version without any issues. Furthermore, if they desire to go legal, they can do exactly that by purchasing Windows 10 from the Windows Store, effectively providing a way to authenticate their copy of Windows.
Initially, it was said that pirates would be able to upgrade “for free”, which caused some confusion in the tech community of whether Windows 10 was going the way of LInux, or what exactly they meant to do. Microsoft have not exactly clarified what they meant, but it sounds like non-official copies of Windows 10 will be missing some features – and no one knows exactly what those are. While there has to be some kind of incentive to go legal, being stuck with a crippled OS doesn’t sound like such a generous offer.
As of now, users running pirate versions of Windows get all updates except the optional ones (the security suite, for example), and have a notification show up every once in a while clarifying it’s a pirate copy. Some versions even go black after a timer finishes, which is a bit extreme, but sure does punish pirates.
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