Comment there's no subscription in the sense you think. (Score 4, Interesting) 277
he's senile or out of loop of what his approved or ms approved tactic leads to.
the tactic is fairly simple, to get as many users to windows which is post win 7. that is, to get as much users to sign up for ms accounts and more importantly to use the store to download their software.
that's the "subscription". not anything else.
and giving away windows licenses to people who ask? that's been a microsoft tactic for half a decade now at least. if you have a smallish business, home/edu user or whatever and have been paying windows(not counting bundled with your laptop or whatever) then you're in minority by now. they've been shoveling the shit out as marketing tactic for a long time now. giving away windows 10 licenses to beta installers is not surprising at all.
and heck how many of those don't have already a windows 7 or 8 license that would be eligible for upgrade anyways? very fucking few. in the west practically everyone who has a new enough computer to run windows 10 already was covered to get it for "free".
and yes we are quite sure windows 10 will launch as non subscription just a normal thing and that it will be free for win7 and up upgraders. the microsoft pushed ad through the windows update has made that painfully clear for everyone who actually uses windows and thus might give a shit about windows 10 anyways.