Microsoft isn't getting "more friendly", they've shifted their business model to sell - you. Look, many people be using our "platform" many businesses want to have access to our users - here, we sell them to you (have store, have advertising opportunities, sell them your programs and ideas - but give us a 30% cut).
This is called the advertising model, and its the most dehumanizing thing in the world. Yet Facebook, google and Microsoft - have based their business model around it. And people like being sold to the highest bidding individual in groups, because they get the benefit of free. We don't want to pay for goods, how about you sell us to strangers, so we can get tricked to buy other goods, that dont have the popularity - to be called a "plattform", and you skim 30% off of others - we eventually will buy goods from.
Also - this is ruining entire pillars of democracy - like journalism, because it turned out, that if you are watched over and segmented more "in depth", and if people feed you with feels instead of researched stories - you, advertisers and people trying to sell you wares, like that much more - than whatever journalists did in the past (- selling reach, and not you as "grouped individuals" with specific likes, demographics and identities).
Also facebook be saying "We no content providers - we only advertisers - *shrug*, here read your friend feeds, look at those pictures! And all those articles of newspapers that want to reach you!" We no have responsibility. We only might do perceptual psychological experiments with the best scientific minds of our generation running the experiments, to keep you in a constant state of emotion, and optimize "stickiness" by inducing endorphin rushes - but look, heres a picture of your grandson - and have you seen what that SL*T of a neighbor did yesterday? I didn't believe it! Also - that call history with your stepdad - you didn't need that, didn't you? But we did.
And as an added bonus - people learn not to pay for products or services they like - in life (with money), they want to pay for them with data - which is very inefficiant - because this ONLY benefits the biggest data brokers (They have the best profiles!), and not small or medium businesses (Which wouldnt HAVE to sell your data, if they had already gotten your money.).
Got it? Good.
Also if the sourcecode of Windows ever became available the following thing would happen:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/24/15867350/microsoft-windows-10-source-code-leak Arrests.
A bunch of new zero days - and hacking sprees. (Windows is a mess of legacy architecture that still has to be supported - and was never designed to be secure from the ground up. (The first (?) multi user Windows OS, with the concept of different user permissions was Windows NT))
And commercial clones. With new skins and features. Very exciting. Would buy - for the features. I likes me features, skins, and my facebook feed. I also like free, and...
edit: The big companies like the "platform" model - because they dont have to do anything to make money. As in - they don't have to convince you to buy their thing in a "real" market economy.
As long as they stay relevant - because some time in your teens you started to use them and never bothered to learn anything else - thats all they need. Maybe do a marketing makeover every two years. Raise the version number of your "thing". Tell everyone about the "features". Turns out its much easier to hook you for life if you are a teenager, and the thing you are given is both heavily advertised, and... Free.
Schools really should teach part of this stuff to their peers. Its relevant to their actual experiences at the time.
And if you think that I am exaggerating, there are only a few windows in peoples lives where they are setting life long "consumption/usage patterns". Big companies actively seek those out (Different democraphics have a different price - pregnant women are priced very highly - because they change buying and brand loyalty patterns once more in their lives, at a fairly late stage... ("Netflix and chill" was formed as an advertising strategy around the same model. To speak to people who - for the first time in their lives have disposable income)...). So the thing thats both "(almost) free" and heavily advertised to a 14-16 year old will be with him/her their entire lifes, if it sticks.
Also a large part of Microsofts business always was to sell software licenses to PC vendors. That didnt change. So to them Windows isn't free - but to you as an end consumer it is... Doesnt that make you think?