I hate how the author frames Linux as “cheap”. Just because it’s open source and free does not mean people use it because it’s cheap. They use it because they’re tired of the shit. Windows is “free”, too, if you never activate it.
Microsoft Activation Scripts: https://massgrave.dev/
What Is MAS?
MAS (Microsoft Activation Scripts) is a fully open-source Windows and Office activation tool distributed as batch scripts. It implements multiple activation methods that operate against Microsoft’s software licensing subsystem (SPP / OSPP / CLIP) to activate Windows and Office without a purchased product key.
https://deepwiki.com/massgravel/massgrave.dev/2-microsoft-activation-scripts-(mas)
Wouldn’t this be a great way to infect loss of pcs?
Not really, compared to traditional stuff like kmsauto and whatnot: batch files = easy audit => the claims are easily verifiable
I’m aware of this as well. I was more talking about legal means of licensing.
I hate how the author frames Linux as “cheap”.
I don’t like it either but it’s definitely an aspect. Why should I continue paying money for (or even pirate) something that exploits me and makes my life worse? Linux is cheap and legal. E.g. I can use it to experiment with old hardware without needing to make a cost-benefit evaluation first.
“Free” has a double meaning that should be pointed out each time one says FOSS, but “as in beer” is not a bad thing.
Windows is “free”, too, if you never activate it.
OK now I’m stumped because it’s so long I actually used Windows. I rcently installed Windows on some work computers but I had to enter the code on the laptop or I couldn’t even finish the installation (I think). AFAIU that code was purchased with the laptop. Did I get that wrong?
And in what way is usability hampered if I don’t activate it?
And in what way is usability hampered if I don’t activate it?
It’s been awhile for me too, but iirc, you can’t change the wallpaper or other theme options and you get a persistent watermark in the lower right corner trying to shame you into activating. Otherwise it’s mostly normal functionality. Pretty sure you even get updates, though I may be wrong on that one.
You can click the small link at the bottom of the installer that says “I don’t have a product key” and proceed through. It will then ask you what edition of Windows you want to install. This is because many PCs have hardware entitlements, so they never got a key.
The only limitation is you can’t customize your desktop/themes and there will be a permeant watermark in the lower right corner asking you to activate.
…you guys paid for Windows?!
you pay for it with every new pc or notebook, if you need it or not. multiple times
Yeah, I thought windows was only free if you pirate it? Can’t imagine why someone would want to do that, but people are weird sometimes.
You can run it unactivated, but it reduces some functionality. The installer has a “I don’t have a product key” option to bypass the key entry screen.
Downfall? Microslop has always been shit. They’ve only gotten this far because of anti competitive behavior.
I’ll give them this much.
They did a brilliant job integrating Windows into every significant sphere of the globe. I had never even heard of LibreOffice until a couple of years ago when they rolled out Windows Recall and I got serious about learning and using Linux and open-source software more in order to protect my privacy.
It’s wild to me that they have made a product that basically worked so incredibly buggy in the span of a few short years. It’s actually a running joke at my work how basic things, that functioned for decades, no longer work as expected. We all just assume that Microsoft is passing along LLM-generated code into prod without any human verification, as a company may be wont to do when they’ve laid off tens of thousands of actual humans.
And now I haven’t touched Windows except where I have to, usually for work.
Windows has stopped being Microsoft’t core business since Windows 8 (2015), and turned into an expensive liability. The core of Microsoft business now lies in selling cloud services, compute, and Office 365 subscriptions.
The problem is - users pay for Windows only once, and not each year like all other fancy rich companies like Adobe make their users do. And the market is saturated, because Microsoft became monopoly around 1995. Every PC sold has Windows installed, and since everyone on the planet already owns one PC per person (citation needed), the sales directly depend on the birth rate.
Trying to change to subscription model was met with violent pushback from users, so they started adding advertisements to taskbar starting in Windows 10, and created a shittiest app store ever to copy Apple.
They have been trying to kill Windows ever since, but they cannot due to numerous contract obligations.
The problem is - users pay for Windows only once
That is not in the slightest true. They pay once per computer. And people go through multiple computers in their lifetime. So it is not at all tied to birthrate.
Very few people buy licenses directly. Most people buy it pre-installed with an OEM license that is tied to that computer.
And so we get to the TPM 2.0 thing that would force people to buy a new computer, and caused many to look for alternative.
Well yes, but you still do not pay each year, this means MICROS~1 is losing profits (in their eyes, and compared to Adobe).
OEM licenses are also bad, because MICROS~1 is selling each copy of Windows for a significant discount, not for $199.99 retail price. And users can even transfer non-OEM licenses to another PC (oh horror!)
I think their point still stands. People “buy” windows when they need a new computer, so the the rate at which windows is sold probably hasn’t changed much. If anything it’s probably slower due to more durable modern hardware like SSDs.
Windows is in no way free. Every new Windows Laptop and PC comes with a license; when you pay for the PC part of that money goes directly to Microsoft.
Microsoft made upgrading to Windows 10 and 11 “free” for those on older hardware who already had paid for a license because they wanted to move people onto the latest versions and stop supporting the old versions. At the same time they’ve been harvesting and selling users data to make even more money.
They are not trying to “kill” Windows, they are trying to change it into a cloud based system too so that you do have to pay a subscription to use it. They want new PCs and Laptops to be essentially nothing more than thin terminals, using your hardware to support their cloud based system but not actually owning any of the software at all.
But they are less bothered about the absolute revenue Windows makes now, and more bothered about making it a walled garden they control and which up-sells you to all their other subscription services under Office, and Xbox.
That does not make sense. If they have the monopoly and it’s on every PC, which are being sold constantly, and it costs money to obtain, then it should at least should have a potential to be highly profitable.
I think the OP is suggesting that Windows OS has been/is a loss leader for Microsoft.
(Akin to Costco selling hot dogs for cheap)
The Microsoft playbook was “make windows accessible, then use it as a platform to up sell Office, Exchange, etc”.
Now with their shift and focus into the cloud and cloud subscriptions. All the users need is a web browser and a dumb terminal: they don’t have to run windows anymore.
Thus, Microsoft’s investment in Windows and developing and cough testing cough a platform that will never be profitable is only costing MS money.
And in order to try to gain some net profit from Windows, they’re turning it into the GeoCities of ad-ridden Operating Systems.
And yet, here we are. Until 2010, Microsoft would say - “What are you gonna do about it, install Linux and edit .doc files in vim lolol?”, but now users would just buy Chromebook instead.
Coincidentally, Windows did not get any new features since Windows 95 up to Windows 8, because why change the atrocious Control Panel if users are gonna buy it anyway?
So they either decided that running a device driver certification program is too expensive, or they are panicking and adding dumb shit to Windows to maintain an appearance of doing something to shareholders.
AI, for the vast majority of users (and especially in the ways Microslop has pushed it) is completely useless at best and a malicious hindrance at worst. In order for Microslop to even begin to reverse course on their reputation they are going to have to accept the cold hard fact that AI is fetish for shareholders and is not actually what their customers want.
And once they do that then they are basically admitting that AI is overvalued and they overinvested in it and wildly overspent. The fragile house of cards might begin to wobble and the bubble might even pop, so naturally every tech company refuses to acknowledge the pushback against AI outside of rare cases of “We’ll revaluate our approach” like Windows did recently. They’re going to have to sink a lot lower before they’ll even consider budging on major changes to their business strategies.
And once they do that then they are basically admitting that AI is overvalued and they overinvested in it and wildly overspent.
Their own terms of service state that AI is “for entertainment purposes only”. They’ve really over-invested in and over-committed to something that’s just an entertainment novelty.
This was sent around recently, on azure specifically. https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporized-a-trillion
It reads a bit like one engineer with a grudge, and you never know what the interpersonal skills of people are like; but the overall impression is of a competent engineer face with total chaos.
The bit about each azure host having a webserver shared across all client vms for info query was gobsmacking tbh. Though i dont work in this area.
Microsoft survived on inertia. Windows was the default. Office was the default. GitHub, after the acquisition, became the default forge for software teams. That kind of position lets a company coast for a long time.
That’s how I remember it from before I switched to Linux.
Just one off-topic niggle: when Github went M$, Git was already a big thing, and other big Sourceforges supported it, maybe most notably GitLab (I considered moving from GH to GL but GL was already way too corporate). Sure, MS envisioned GH to be “the default”, but it never really was. The biggest, probably, but never the default.
And if you think that all repositories are on GH, check how many of those are actually just mirrors.
Citing Xitter posts as sources. Indefensible.
