Alec Meer, writing for Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

People aren’t so hot on paying for things these days, which means the money comes from harvesting data and flogging it to advertisers and other organisations who want to know exactly what we’re all up to online. Microsoft want a piece of that, so if you ever wondered why they’ve made the Windows 10 upgrade free to Win 7 & 8 users, here’s one possible answer. Windows 10 has all sorts of user tracking baked right in.

Luckily, you can opt-out of the data collection and Alec even explains how. But this is just outrageous to me.

I don’t know what it’s going to take in order to convince our culture that software isn’t free. But I’m willing to do almost anything at this point — I can’t even convince my family members to purchase $1.99 apps. That’s not okay. Developers should be compensated for their work and the bulk of that money shouldn’t be coming from advertising or the selling of user data.

(Via Pixel Envy.)