i mean M$ makes the bulk of their profit from Windows off of OEM and enterprise licenses. and you can bet there aren't real companies out there risking a lawsuit by pirating it.
The people who install Windows on their own machines are a small minority compared to people who get prebuilts, laptops, or use Windows on an office PC. And maybe its better for them long term if every Pirate is on Windows vs using Linux
It is in Microsoft's interest to allow piracy because all of those people become familiar with (and dependent on) Windows. That means more IT professionals with Windows experience, more documents circulating around in Microsoft formats, better KPIs for whatever ad contracts they have with Candy Crush and other bundled software. It grants them broad influence over the software industry as a whole through things like DirectX, .NET, Visual Studio, and Azure. It gives them a foot in the door to any market niche they desire (like www browsers).
If it is free, you are the product. But Microsoft is a rather different business than Facebook. They are selling their userbase mostly to various commercial software firms, hardware manufacturers, and commercial enterprises.
holy shit, thank you, it's been telling me to activate for like a year
The idea is that if M$'s real moneymaker was software sales they would lock it down a lot harder than they do, but since they make it easy to use Windows without paying for it it implies that software sales are a low priority.
The scripts are in here btw: https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
