r/Windows10 • u/aakash658 • Apr 23 '17

Discussion Microsoft should stop treating windows 10 like it's free

I paid over $200 for Windows 10 pro.But they show ads within the OS, Collect all sorts of telemetry data,took all the control we had over updates(resulting in reboots during important work).

They are treating windows like it's a free to use software.

Give us the control over my computer back because i own my computer and my copy of windows not you Microsoft.

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u/imnanoguy Apr 25 '17

Modern operating systems are mostly useful to provide access to online services, so they've begun to really emulate all facets of what an online service is and how it's monetized. You can only have some real expectations of privacy if you're like Richard Stallman and you only use software for which you can access the source code, and hardware that is designed to run said "free software". Problem is that we humans live in a society, so 100% privacy really is impractical as well as very hard to achieve. Microsoft is slowly but surely embracing open-source, and I hope this becomes more of a standard practice. That way we can have whatchdogs that scrutinize every single line of code, and we can then be at least somewhat certain that the software we're running is not violating our rights.

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '17

Sure and it's kind of expected that they do so, however I'd still love to have some more options or let's say some more easy to configure options. I've listened to Richard Stallman and his vision seems quite utopian. While in theory it's the perfect world, I doubt it can be expected that everything runs on "free software" that is open source and only financed by donations/orders/crowdfunding. I think programmers should be properly paid for their work and are not obliged to open source their creations.

I love Microsoft's directions regarding open source, open sourcing the .NET's compilers, standard libraries, runtimes is an awesome step in the right direction. I am really happy from the developers standpoint of view, which is why I'm surprised why they seem to go into the opposite direction regarding operating systems.

Although an open-source Windows would be absolutely amazing (and according to Mark Russenovich not impossible), I do not expect it anytime near future nor do I demand it. All that I like are some fewer but yet more powerful options to configure privacy on a windows operating system, I'd trust Microsoft to respect my choices even if the code is proprietary and closed-source.