I’ve never paid for it. Most Windows 11 users have not paid for it. You can buy a license but they also gave it away to effectively everyone and anyone who wants to can run it without buying it so long as you don’t mind the “activate more” watermark and less appearance options
It shows where Microsoft’s mind is at. And it won’t stop here.
God forbid they make money on a product they have given away
Given away? Windows is a paid product. And there are other (free!) operating systems that are not driven by profit.
I’ve never paid for it. Most Windows 11 users have not paid for it. You can buy a license but they also gave it away to effectively everyone and anyone who wants to can run it without buying it so long as you don’t mind the “activate more” watermark and less appearance options
They make their real money on Azure iirc. And they’ve recently had a security leak of about 38 TB of data. Nice.