Microsoft sought a retrial and after this was postponed in February 2004,[9] offered to settle the case. As part of the licensing settlement, Microsoft paid an estimated $20 million, and Lindows, Inc. transferred the Lindows trademark to Microsoft and changed its name to Linspire, Inc.

The company was thus never owned by M$. So there never was M$ proprietary code in Linspire.

2 Billion People won’t use a Microsoft distribution of Linux unless they can control their greed long enough to make it worth using, which is unlikely.

It's the power of default. If it comes by default on hardware, people will unknowingly use it. And if the upgrade path is smooth and unnoticeable, people will upgrade too.

I'm not sure whether Windows is their cash cow anymore. I'd assume Office 365 (or whatever it's called now) along with Azure make up the majority of their income. Window is probably just the gateway to their garden. But, change is hard and most likely M$ won't pull an Edge --> Chromium with their OS any time soon - and I sure hope they don't.

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