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On January 14th, Windows 7 reached its official "end-of-life," bringing an end to its updates as well as its ten years of poisoning education, invading privacy, and threatening user security. The end of Windows 7's lifecycle gives Microsoft the perfect opportunity to undo past wrongs, and to upcycle it instead.
We call on them to release it as free software, and give it to the community to study and improve. As there is already a precedent for releasing some core Windows utilities as free software, Microsoft has nothing to lose by liberating a version of their operating system that they themselves say has "reached its end."
Also at The Register and Wccftech.
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Free Software Foundation Demands That Microsoft Release Windows 7 as Free Software
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:08AM (5 children)
Asking is fine and one thing. The headline here hyped it up to "demand". MS will laugh this off, there's still money in Win7 and they will bleed every last cent from it.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:15PM (3 children)
Asking and demanding are the same thing when you can't enforce them.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @03:54AM (2 children)
What does one "enforce" by asking? For example, what am I attempting to enforce on you by asking that previous question? What would be the equivalent demand?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday January 31 2020, @03:57PM (1 child)
Asking implies you never intend to enforce it. Demanding implies you do. But when you can't or won't, it doesn't matter.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 01 2020, @06:24AM
Asking implies you won't enforce it. So you're claiming that any asking is automatically equivalent to impotently demanding. But there's one important difference. You're being relatively polite - the saying about catching more flies with sugar than vinegar comes to mind.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 31 2020, @05:40AM
This is probably why the FSF asked in the first place. They're pointing out how hypocritical MS is for continuing to bleed customers for money for an "end of life" OS. If it's *really* EOL, then they need to just stop supporting it altogether, and that means it's useless, and they should just open-source it. But of course, no, they won't do that, because they can still extract money from customers for supporting it. But if they're continuing to support it, then it's obviously not really EOL, is it?