Windows 10 will NOT be a free upgrade for pirates

Not everyone was excited when Microsoft announced that Windows 10 would be a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users. For some of us, Windows has always been a free upgrade thanks to… questionable methods, so the announcement that it would be officially free was just like, whatever. Unfortunately, people who used these questionable methods to obtain their current version of Windows won’t be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free.

Free Windows 10 is not really going to be free for everyone. Computers that aren’t running a genuine, paid-for earlier version of Windows will not be eligible for the upgrade, Windows boss Terry Myerson clarified in a blog post on Friday. When Microsoft had announced the free upgrade, the company had indicated even pirated versions of Windows would be eligible for the upgrade. Then it backtracked. And now it has clarified. Myerson confirmed that users of bootlegged versions of Windows will be warned with a watermark and regularly asked to upgrade, a practice known as nagware. Microsoft has complicated licensing enforcement tech. Sometimes people are using a correctly licensed version but Microsoft has made a mistake and thinks it’s a pirated copy. Sometimes a person has bought a new PC and the manufacturer didn’t install the license correctly. And, then again, sometimes it really is a bootlegged version of Windows, which has been a big problem in some countries, like China.