Absolutely, and Microsoft knows this. You could even upgrade a pirated version of Windows to a legit copy when they did the upgrade drive for 7 I believe it was. Did it myself. And they completely turn a blind eye to OEM key reselling, which is why you can get legit windows keys for less than $10 these days.

They've also never done anything substantial against pirates, all they do is pester about buying a key and warn about the risks. The "worst" they do is stop you from using windows update which some see as a feature. When they could just completely lock you out and/or report you to the police.

The money is in server for Microsoft, but they're losing that battle slowly but surely since they can't make windows actually work properly in a container setting. I have customers that love Microsoft but despite their best efforts at making containerized windows workloads work it just sucks major ass. And virtually everybody is coming around to realize just how insane of a paradigm shift containers are.

And losing that battle is why 12 will likely move to subscription. And I'm willing to bet money that, in 10 years time, will be considered the starting point for Microsofts dramatic loss of market share in the home PC market. From 90% or so now down to like 50 ish %. But maybe some smart guys at Microsoft will nip that in the bud.

When most people bought their PCs, Windows was already bought and paid for and installed by the vendor, so piracy might not have hit as hard as you think.

If you’re Microsoft, that last thing you want is people having a choice of operating system - either in the store, or when they get home - so you make sure it’s a done deal before the PC is unboxed.

That’s SOP for Microsoft, and what got them into trouble when they were bundling Internet Explorer.

It’s also worth noting, that Linux hasn’t always been a competitive desktop product for the home market.

Microsoft has openly encouraged piracy as far back as the 90s. I remember an interview with Gates where he said as much.

This has been part of Microsoft's business model, especially for Windows and Office for 30 years. They actively encouraged pirating the software to ensure it cemented itself as the defacto standard in homes and offices with a view that one day users would have no choice but pay for it. For over 20 years now this has been part of the bigger desktop-as-a-service goal.

Soon businesses and home users will have no choice but to remotely log into a Windows system that is hosted in a datacentre and provided by Microsoft or one of their partners. Local installs will be a thing of the past. Think Citrix Presentation Server and thin clients which is where this whole idea started a long time ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft

Ignoring unauthorized copying

... Bill Gates said "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

The practice allowed Microsoft to gain some dominance over the Chinese market and only then taking measures against unauthorized copies. In 2008, by means of the Windows update mechanism, a verification program called "Windows Genuine Advantage" (WGA) was downloaded and installed. When WGA detects that the copy of Windows is not genuine, it periodically turns the user's screen black. This behavior angered users and generated complaints in China with a lawyer stating that "Microsoft uses its monopoly to bundle its updates with the validation programs and forces its users to verify the genuineness of their software".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

... the documents identified open-source software, and in particular the Linux operating system, as a major threat to Microsoft's domination of the software industry, and suggested tactics Microsoft could use to disrupt the progress of open-source software.

Windows is largely successful because there was nothing else good enough for Intel to use back in the late 80s. They struck a partnership and it took off, indoctrinating people into the Windows way of life for decades to come. Most people hate new tech, it means that they have to learn something new that they'd rather not (akin to telling someone to write with the opposite hand than the one they've been using their entire lives), even if that thing is simple. Piracy just strengthened that already strong foothold that they had.

Windows being easy to pirate wasnt the reason for it's popularity. It had market share because they allowed for it to be preinstalled on machines for virtually nothing. They allowed it to be preinstalled on machines for virtually nothing because the OS wasn't the flagship product.

MS Office has always been the major flagship product for the company. This was true in 1994 and still is today. Office is so important to their revenue streams that it's fairly common knowledge and has been mentioned by former employees that OS development would focus on compatibility with Office programs, not the other way around.

Specifically if you look at the years around Office XP and 2003, that suite is used very much as a CVS. They deprecate their operating systems using Office.

That's the genius of proprietary software business models, also adobe is guilty of this, let people pirate your software so they dominate using your software. Once their skills are built on it once they get to the workforce they won't even question using a libre alternative. In the end they manage to dominate the market

Not true at all. You're thinking the past 20 years instead of the past 35 years. Windows was already "the" OS around the world well before you could just pirate a copy online. They cut deals and made sure if you bought a pc it has windows on it. They made sure the countries you speak of had dirt cheap cd keys without piracy. Microsoft in the late 80s/90s had a lot of moving parts that went into making sure the only OS you'd be using was windows. Even after they got in trouble in 1992-94 and in 2000-2001.

Piracy or not. Windows was almost anyone's only choice.

I think Windows is successful because it was defacto preinstalled on all computers. Even people in third world countries are buying computers whole, not a basket of parts to assemble.

Also software. You're not going to assemble a computer, install Linux, and then not be able to run anything on it. You want to run all the software that was built to run on Windows, which was built to run on Windows because it came installed on every computer, etc. (Remember Linux back then really couldn't run all that much. No office? No games? You're toast.)

Windows as a software package would have never been affordable to individuals or local-level orgs in countries like India and Bangladesh (especially in the 2000’s) that are now powerhouses of IT. ... Had the OS been too difficult to pirate, educators and local institutions in these countries would have certainly shifted to Linux and the like.

While i somewhat agree with your overall statement, this part is just wrong. Linux in the late 1990s and 2000s was very different from today, where you just plug in a CD/USB and select your region. Linux back then was very nerdy, you had to choose your hardware first to make sure there was a linux driver and the installation process was very difficult, especially before plug&play where you had to know which IRQs and slots you had to use for network, sound and videocard to avoid conflicts. I remember trying to install Linux from a CD, only to work my war from one error message to the next because it did not like my videocard, soundcard or both.

Also, what would you do with a linux pc at home or at work if it could not run word, excel, duke nukem 3D, TTD, programs you knew from work/school or software you could pirate from your friends?

...and they knew it from the beginning.

Even the MPAA and RIAA know piracy fuels culture and makes golden hits into platinum hits and boost sequel album sales and auxiliary items (toys and lunchboxes).

They can't help themselves because to the execs and shareholders, it feels like lost sales and theft. And the DRM market capitalizes on those feelings.

windows is largely successful because of oems.

yup ADOBE is exactly the same.

they do it on purpose for the exact same reason you are mentioning.

You are right, but it's not just poor developed countries and not just windows either.

Back in the 1990s, copy protection in general was weak and companies wishing to expand market share did not prioritize combating piracy.

They always just focused on making the big companies pay through licensing audits and kept prices high to ensure revenue.

The whole industry just accepted that students, researchers and tinkerers would pirate their software.

Photoshop, Office, Visual Studio and even enterprise software like Oracle had this dual strategy: let piracy help spread market share among those who can't or won't pay, while maintaining high prices and security audits to drive revenue from companies.

Many companies still follow this strategy.

Pirate Linux!

Wait...

Same with Photoshop, Maya etc. These corps know that letting consumers pirate their software will create more legit end users. Since people will get used to their software and won’t easily switch when they enter the professional workforce where these corps don’t condone piracy and actually audit businesses. At least in Western nations they even audit small businesses. Like my friend used to work at a small engineering firm in the Netherlands and Autodesk came by to audit the CAD licenses.

Yup, when I was talking with a few different Microsoft representatives, they just straightforwardly stated that they don’t focus at all on punishing or pushing consequences for “obtained/purchased windows instances via any existing alternative/not supported ways” when it comes to private/home users.

They surely and happily will put the idea of buying a key or official upgrade from their certified resellers locally or online on the table.

It is quite a different story with larger organizations and companies.

—

Of course all this info is based on just a few talks during the last decade and with incoming subscription (ugh) model a lot will change, I guess.

microsoft owns github

microsoft owns windows

mas is used to pirate windows

mas is hosted on github

hmmmm...

I think it is the other way around; easy pirate versions appeared becuz windows was popular, providing access to those who can't afford.

Not really. Offices were one of the major early adopters of computers and windows is perfect for them with plethora of features they offered right out of the package.

Windows GUI was groundbreaking, their text processing and excel was a game changer, and windows doesn't allow you to delete your own boot partition with a sudo command so it was pretty idiot proof.

Once windows had the majority of marketshare, it was pretty obvious that whoever was buying PCs (back in the day it was more that a dad got a PC from his office or bought one which was similar), got it with windows.

I think this is really true. In 2000s people used to pirate everything (at least where I am from). And even now, apple marketshare is never big compared to US for example.

Its not random thoughts, its the reality and msft knows it and they let it happened same as adobe with photoshop. They let students pirate their softwares so that by the time they graduated and enter the work field, they'd keep using it in their new job/company, where they would charge real expensive money for the license

For private individuals and small institutions, yes, they would definitely use linux if windows was 100% impossible to pirate.

For corporations and bigger institutions, no, they would 100% continue to use windows just because of the control they can have on their devices, group policies, single sign on, and so on. It's possible to do that on Linux, but not as easily. They're already paying 15 dollars / month to microsoft just for AAD/entra/[whatever they call it this week] or even more to have office integrated with that and $200 for a permanent license for a single PC is a drop in the bucket

I saw a yt video few years ago about how microsoft allowed windows piracy on South Asian countries to increase windows adoption rate.

I read something similar many years ago where Microsoft intentionally wanted people to use use pirated windows to increase their user base.

I mean sure in those countries maybe. But the vast majority of people using windows in North America would still be using Windows (And possibly Europe, but I cant speak for Europe) even if it wasnt easily piratable.

From a private end user point of view yes. But in enterprises Windows and Office is successful. Lots of money is going to Microsoft here.

That's how they got around selling at a loss to crush the competition I guess.