Humanity has risen!
SasqWatch
http://arstechnica.com/information-...-makes-a-nod-to-subscriptions-for-windows-10/
Hang on to your licenses for dear life. Already they are trying to push their Office 365 across the board, meaning you don't own your office software anymore and now seemingly this will move onto Windows. Office 2003 still works perfectly fine and has a much better interface than the rubbish Ribbon later versions have tried to push. But now Microsoft wants continuous revenue from Windows and not let you pay for something once and keep it yours forever.
EAsked if the plan was to make Windows a loss leader to draw people into the Microsoft ecosystem, Turner said that the company had "not had any conversations" on this. He reiterated this when asked if the company was going to start losing money on Windows, saying "that's not any conversations that we've had… we've got to monetize it differently."
What form might that different monetization take? Turner says that "there are services involved. There are additional opportunities for us to bring additional services to the product and do it in a creative way."
Turner didn't say what specifically Microsoft intended to do, revealing only that the plans will be revealed "through the course of summer and spring." However, he did give an indication of one thought that the company had: "finding new ways to monetize the lifetime of that customer on those [zero cost Windows license] devices."
The implication, then, is that Microsoft is looking at generating some kind of on-going revenue from Windows users to replace the initial purchase. Previous rumors have already pointed toward the creation of Windows subscriptions, and Turner's answer also points at some kind of subscription system.
The questions—and answers—allude to perhaps the biggest change facing Microsoft's business. The growth of the smartphone and the tablet may have changed the way we use computers, but arguably more significant for Microsoft is the change in how software is bought and sold. For three decades, Microsoft has sold operating system licenses to both end users and OEMs alike, and the company delivered paid upgrades for those operating systems every few years.
Hang on to your licenses for dear life. Already they are trying to push their Office 365 across the board, meaning you don't own your office software anymore and now seemingly this will move onto Windows. Office 2003 still works perfectly fine and has a much better interface than the rubbish Ribbon later versions have tried to push. But now Microsoft wants continuous revenue from Windows and not let you pay for something once and keep it yours forever.