MS clearly doesn't get it. I agree that they're no longer complacent, but their sense of where they need to go is so far off that I doubt they'll figure it out any time soon. If they're lucky they can coast on inertia long enough to figure it out.

They missed the boat completely on mobile, they're going to have to convince people to use apps out of the Windows store and have those apps work properly on desktop, laptop and mobil in order to have any hope of catching up. I doubt that's going to work out very well. I don't think they can bully their way past Android and iOS to get enough developers to make it a competitive platform.

I don't agree with the notion that 10 has done anything positive for MS. At best they were able to buy themselves a bit of time by allowing people using 7 to remain on Windows without having to pay. But 8 and 8.1 are going to be supported for a goodly number of years.

Also, keep in mind that these people didn't pay for the upgrade. Many of them didn't even want the upgrade, but are being tricked into upgrading with that recent change to the classification of the upgrade.

Despite certain people's belief that 10 is doing well, it's pretty damning that MS is having to first resort to giving away the OS for free and then tricking people into updating it when that wasn't enough.

Yes. But Win10 upgrade is not Win10 OEM, even if it's bound to the Hardware ID. From what I recall, you can revoke an OEM activation, but you can't revoke the upgrade activation. Too long since I used this kind of OEM license though, so it is quite possible that I'm wrong about being able to revoke it.
Pre-post edit: Seems like transferring an OEM license from one machine to another requires you to contact Microsoft. Not sure if the transfer is in accordance to the EULA or not, so let's err in the side of caution and assume that OEM licenses cannot be transferred.

Not an official answer. At least 2 people pointing it out in that thread as well.

If your license expired when the lifecycle of the OS ended, then there are no valid Windows XP licenses available.

Either way, thank you for the answer

I strongly doubt that ... and I don't think a win license ever "expire". You can use it for as long as you like, I think you confuse providing support with expiry date.

Non-sense. Maybe Steam should tremble before the Mighty Gog.

That's correct. Basically when you take the free upgrade to 10, you have 31 days to downgrade back to the previous version where the license remains valid. After that time you're stuck with 10 permanently.

In those cases the license is tied to the hardware and I have yet to hear anybody say that the license would expire on a set date. Although, at some point the activation servers will probably go down. But, the XP activation servers are still up, so who knows when that might be.

One of the interesting things to note is that it looks like MS is going to allow non-genuine copies to upgrade to 10 for free with the idea that people would do that and would find that they are willing to pay. IMHO, if MS does actually do that, it seems like the best thing to do would be to use a non-genuine install to try out 10 so that you don't run the risk of losing the proper license. Then for folks that don't mind the crap that is 10, you can always do the upgrade the proper way.

Ok. I see your point but disagree. I think you're seeing the MS of 10 and 5 years ago, not the MS since Nadella replaced Balmer. And I also think you are - like most normal users like us usually do - discounting the importance of the enterprise market. When the enterprises resisted the adoption of Win8 it really put MS in a tough spot. It's no coincidence Google actually managed to get their Cloud productivity suites some market share in parallel, and Office - not Windows - is a main MS cash cow. If only for reverting to a "normal" situation W10 is a huge winner for MS. As for the platform convergence aspect, we'll have to wait and see what happens. Microsoft became the behemoth it is today by focusing on the power users, I think they might very well be able to reclaim that again.

Edit: Seems like the previous license is transformed into a Win10 one. Disregard the following.

The previous license remains valid regardless of the time that passed. The 30 days (not 31) is to have the option to revert to your previous OS by using the built-in downgrade.

Bears are the #1 threat

Not as long as they have Jay Cutler they aren't!

Once it's activated, it's permanently yours. No hidden cost whatsoever.
If you upgrade FPP, the resulting end will be FPP. You can revoke your resulting FPP key/license by downgrading within first month, else it's permanent upgrade.

The original key will be accepted by Windows 10 sometimes later, but not now.
No it's not. Once you upgrade and stay there, you can't reuse your original Windows.

You can, but it's a breach of EULA and thus it's piracy.

OK, that explains that. I thought I had 10 installed for more than 31 days. I think they could do themselves a big favor by thinking things like this through before issuing press releases.

I thought I was able to do it because I had an OEM copy from Lenovo's small business line of laptops. Those allow you to install and validate on other computers as long as you don't have it on more than one at once.
I think you're vastly underestimating how dysfunctional MS has been. They've taken steps under Nadella to address that through things like ditching the stacked rankings, but it's going to be quite a while before they're free of the incompetence and sabotage that characterized the Ballsack era of MS.

As mush as people love to hate Bill, at least he was enough of a nerd to concern himself about what the product was. Even if they didn't have the manpower to do it properly at all times.

The enterprise market is there, but mostly because Exchange and Excell don't really have appropriate replacements. At least not for the enterprise market. It is a lot of money, but it's not so much money that they can afford to piss off regular users. The enterprise users are not going to train their employees to use MS products if they're no longer being used by virtually everybody at home. It just doesn't make any business sense to do that.
It's just infringement, but it's pretty damn close to being piracy. I'm not sure how it can be piracy if you have the install media legitimately.

Anyways, MS did themselves a huge disservice, by not laying out the policy clearly early on. It's rather confusing and depending upon which sources one looks at, it can be completely different.

Software piracy is the illegal copying, distribution, or use of software.

You own a license for one copy of Windows, no more, no less. The install media is upgraded along with the license. Either you use one and uninstall the other, or do not install anything altogether. Anything more is a piracy.

Windows 7 works fine, I dont console game, and the only reason I would switch to windows 10 is if I absolutely have to. Heck the only reason most GOG people use windows is because we cant get devs to fully commit to a single free OS that is games friendly. Sad to say I feel that they are FORCED to use windows/macOS.

Problem is the software is not made by Microsoft and works against Microsoft interest. With forced update, Microsoft can break the functionality of it when they want.
Unlike Window 7 where it is stable and I stop updating it for months without problems, Window 10 can install new spyware anytime.