It's official: Windows 10 will not be free for pirates

[Shinma]

Microsoft executives said Friday that the company will not offer Windows 10 for free to those without legitimate licenses to Microsoft’s software, as the company had previously seemed to say.

Terry Myerson, executive vice president of operating systems for Microsoft, wrote Friday that the company will provide “very attractive” offers to those who wish to upgrade from what he called a Windows operating system in a “non-Genuine state” to Windows 10. But, he said, it will not be free...

Full story available at the following link,
Click HERE



With that said,

Windows 10 Preview testers will get a free upgrade to final RTM version

Microsoft plans to let Windows 10 Insiders hop onto the official release train when the software ships to manufacturers this summer.

In response to a question on Twitter, Microsoft’s Gabriel Aul wrote that that Insiders will be able to upgrade to the RTM (Release to manufacturing) version at no charge. This is the version that PC makers load onto their machines before shipping them out to consumers...

Full story available at PC World,
Click HERE

[Welshjim]

Shinma--
"Windows 10 Preview testers will get a free upgrade to final RTM version"

Why is that news versus MS offer to give Win 10 to all users of Win 7 SP1 and Win 8.1?

[fink]

Unless they had (or have) plans for something like an annual subscription for Win 10 or to charge for updates after a certain period or some other medium or long term revenue streams, allowing people with pirated copies of earlier versions of Windows to get Win 10 for free made no sense. It would actually encourage people to acquire illegal versions of Win 7/8 just to get a genuine Win 10 for free.

In any case it's very strange and not particularly clever business-wise to not have their Win 10 roll out strategy clearly defined by now and made even worse by ongoing mixed messages.