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Comment by _Understated_ | Hacker News Reader

It's not free... I need to have paid for a valid Win7 or Win8 license to qualify for "free".

My experience is that the upgrade requires a valid Windows COA number for Windows 7 or Windows 8. COA's have been required since Windows XP Service Pack 2 [or 1 or 3] to install a non-cracked version of Windows.

So far, I've installed Windows 10 four times. Three of them have been on computers I bought used using the used computer's COA.

As someone who makes a living off Windows software, surely you have paid for your license? Else you got absolutely no right to complain about anything breaking.

So you are implying I stole Windows? That's your contribution to this?

I think it's more that the situation where a person could have a license compliant installation of Windows without having purchased [for some definition of "purchase"] a copy of Windows is non-obvious.

> So you are implying I stole Windows?

Actually, when you claim that it is not a free upgrade because you need to have paid for a valid license for the software you claim to be using, you are implying that you stole Windows.

The other poster appeared to be presuming that that implication was unintentional and inaccurate, and that the upgrade was indeed free for you.

No, xe was merely pointing out a cost that isn't factored into "free upgrade". You're probably not realizing that to people with long experience of Microsoft marketing, upgrading to Windows hasn't necessarily meant from Windows.

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