- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
I'd say more like Adobe. They're not going above and beyond to stop piracy of their products, GenP is doing just fine, and the reason Adobe is fine with it is because you're still using their products. Meaning you get locked into their software ecosystem. So when the time comes where you have to give a shit about software legality, you won't have an easy time moving to an alternative and you will get skinned alive by that Creative Cloud subscription. That was Bill's idea back in the 90's, and during his and Ballmer's tenure you still had to go through hoops to pirate Windows. Only with Nadella has the picture shifted and now your free Windows 10/11 ISO is basically a fully working Windows installation with an annoying watermark and disabled customization options, which also doesn't compare to WinRAR/Total Commander/REAPER, as those programs only give you a nag screen every time you launch them, and after you close it they work exactly like the full versions, no limited functionality.It's the same strat as winRAR. They only strictly enforce licensing against businesses.
Lest we forget the real reason why Microsoft doesn't care about Windows piracy, even when it comes to the LTSC versions: ever since 10 Windows is full of telemetry. They'll still make some money off of you even if you pirate those special enterprise versions, and it would cost them more to try and combat piracy than it does to just let it exist. It's maybe like 0.01% of their total revenue when Azure and Office 365 are their main bread makers, and the vast majority of Windows profits comes from company and OEM licensing, the former basically demands you to pay to not get fined to hell and back, and the latter is unaffected by piracy since, well, people just buy computers with pre-installed valid Windows licenses, constantly.
