Well, as my primary OS is Windows 7, and I also have 8.1, I am not too concerned about Windows 10, I only boot to it to do a Windows 10 sub-style in SkinStudio 10 anyway. I really don't think they are going to force subscription fees on people who have upgraded for free though, that would totally put Microsoft out of business. Just my opinion.

It depends entirely on how much they charge, just like everything else.  If it's what I would consider reasonable, I'll probably buy it.  I'm not fundamentally against paying for software.  Otherwise in my case I guess there would be Win7 for what patch period remains for it, which I would probably choose over an unpatched Win10.  I really have no interest in Linux, it seems like more of a hobby than I'm looking for at this point.

I really don't expect it to be an issue though.  At some point they may choose to charge for a service pack (e.g., Win3.1), and if they do I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, and again it would all depend on price/options.

Honestly I'm not at all convinced or concerned that there is some horrible master plan for Win10.  Remember all the speculation regarding the $40 or whatever upgrade offer for Win8?  And after that they didn't even charge for 8.1.  I think it it far more likely that many of the speculative writers on those various sites are just trying to generate traffic.

Yup! 

nothing will happen at the end of the (freebie upgrade) year. they need big install base to sell the other rubbish / collect data, etc.

most people get their windows via oem installs on new machines, does anyone really see windows going kaput after 1 year if they don't pony up? no. that'll never happen.

win10 being win10 means devices gets lifetime upgrade for free. though of course definition of that is yet to be defined. you can reasonably see free upgrades (on that device) for maybe 5 years until ms deems certain hardware requirement is needed or some such for a particular upgrade.

enterprise gets subscriptions just like it always has. don't confuse that and consumer stuff. smb might get screwed though.

The offer is for a year, not the 'free'.

Never was.

Simple English....

If you wanted Win 10 as your OS you could get it for nothing.

If you didn't get it in that first year you miss the chance to get it for nothing.

After that first year you pay to get it...just like all other previous OS releases.

End of story.

Other than.... MS will/is probably offering alternative subscription models for appropriate clients.

Don't get tripped up by semantics.  "free for first year" does not mean you then have to pay after you already have it.

It means you have to pay IF you DON'T already have it...

Jafo is correct, you can take off the Tin foil hat.  That being said it's very likely that a future Windows home releases will have a subscription model.  It's a subscription economy we're living in.

I dl'd Linux' latest release. Mint 18 with cinnamon. Since unloading 8.1 I got plenty of room for another OS. Just another toy to play with. 

If they don't have any plans to force a subscriber model on us then why don't they say so explicitly?  They know enough of the community is asking these questions.  They've already preempted our right to not upgrade in the future and their tactics, until most recently, were more than just a little questionable.  I mean waking up with Win 10 on your machine and then preventable driver issues galore (because they are not doing the testing they were before - all of us are defacto Microsoft employees).  

It makes one pause.

Does anyone know Elon Musk?  Maybe someone like him would dump a billion into the Linux of our dreams.  

backs out of the room slowly... 

surely that'll be him describing some sort of concept, and then other people dumping the money?

1 thing about linux... it just ain't consumer friendly enough as long as people looking up how to do stuff is given command line answers.

as for mint.. simple things like always keeping numlock on (upon login) requires a separate app instead of being baked into the os settings.. or upgrading from 17->18 not done via gui... just meh.