"This one weird trick makes Windows not suck" - except that the weird trick is... piracy!

I get that people really like Windows, but all these contortions just to delay the inevitable... yeesh. At some point, people either need to get onboard with the MS vision for the product, or accept that it's time to switch to something different.

You can get LTSC through microsoft resellers. Last I heard, you have to buy at least 5 licenses to be in Volume Licensing, but if you only have one computer, you can buy one LTSC license ($270-$300) and then 4 low cost filler licenses (I think seats for something were $10-$30 each?)

And the LTSC license is an upgrade license, so the computer needs licensing for Windows already (maybe needs Pro and not Home, too).

But it ends up being a large amount of money to run wierd windows.

No need for a license. Just activate it with one of the many activation scripts around.

So pirate it

Some would say, if you already have a legal, paid-for license to run Windows on a given PC, and you merely want a slightly different version which is older and doesn't add any extra features, that's a lesser form of piracy.

It's using a legit copy of windows and performing a legit activation, no exploits or anything. To call it piracy is the same as me telling you my pin and calling you a hacker when you login to my account, no? Microsoft could fix it, but they don't.

I genuinely wonder why they haven't. Those activation githubs have been around for what feels like forever at this point, and you just activate copies of Windows acquired from Microsoft for free, and they just... don't seem to care?

I have no direct knowledge, but my best guess is that they have significant legit customers using these as an alternative to Microsoft's own Key Management Services. Historically, some stuff like this has even turned out to be used by the company themselves (e.g. a few Steam/GOG releases have been found to use old warez scene cracks, official arcade emulators using bootleg sets from MAME, etc.).

I use my MSDN keys generated back in 2015 over and over. It works great 9 years later.

> To call it piracy is the same as me telling you my pin and calling you a hacker when you login to my account, no?

Somewhat absurd linguistically and morally ambiguous, yet possibly legally accurate?

Was it piracy to install windows 95 on 100 computers with one cd and one product id and no outside licensing?

Of course it was. Just because it lets you do it, doesn't mean it's not piracy.

Well, that activation was entirely offline, wasn't it? With the tech at the time, would it really be possible to stop multiple activations? Windows 11 now requires you to log in using email and that you have internet, so they could easily pull the plug on the MAS scripts. Yet they don't.

IMHO, you have more of an obligation to pay for a license than they have an obligation to enforce payment through technical means.