http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/18/microsoft-will-offer-free-windows-10-upgrades-to-pirates-worldwide/
so that's how really concerned MS has been over OS theft...something many of us have been fairly certain of for years...they could always have locked down Windows so pirating wasn't trivially easy.
MS long ago made the decision that most pirate users couldn't/wouldn't purchase at the inflated retail prices so the 'lost sales' were mostly illusory and they'd rather have you using Windows free than letting Linux reach critical mass as a real competitor. Now they have made this position explicit. As the article notes and MS was specifically asked: They are more than happy to have you install and run a pirate copy of 7 or 8 or 8.1 next week and then upgrade to genuine Win 10 when released later this year....
so that's how really concerned MS has been over OS theft...something many of us have been fairly certain of for years...they could always have locked down Windows so pirating wasn't trivially easy.
MS long ago made the decision that most pirate users couldn't/wouldn't purchase at the inflated retail prices so the 'lost sales' were mostly illusory and they'd rather have you using Windows free than letting Linux reach critical mass as a real competitor. Now they have made this position explicit. As the article notes and MS was specifically asked: They are more than happy to have you install and run a pirate copy of 7 or 8 or 8.1 next week and then upgrade to genuine Win 10 when released later this year....