Has the inevitable happened? The rise of free operating systems (Linux, and a future Chrome OS to name a few), and an increasingly free (or ad driven) internet with services from email to online photo editors seems to have changed the view in the Microsoft camp also.

Today an announcement from Redmond tells us of an advertisement driven future Windows 7 licence available at end of May. This will be a free download of "Windows 7 Free Edition", which will have the same features as the Home Edition. Users will be greeted by advertisements during logon (which on Windows is long enough to allow showing advertisements). Launching any program will also launch a pop up advertisement which can only be closed after a 5 second wait.

Is this the first step in Windows making the transition to a free operating system? Would you be interested in this kind of Windows edition, and will it danger the growth of Linux?

Time will tell how successful this edition of Windows will be.

EDIT 2nd April: This of course is an april fools story, there is no Windows Free Edition. Although on the other hand I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft will need to release some kind of Free Edition at some point in the future. The free OS alternatives (mainly Linux) are getting in to a stage where Microsoft surely needs to take some kind of defensive measures to keep its market share.

[ windows // operating systems // microsoft // free ]