I think you misunderstand the relationship Microsoft has with corporations. If they turn on something like this after the fact while promising to do the opposite previously they will get thoroughly railed in court and then no one will ever buy their products ever again.

The reason that companies use Windows rather than running everything on Linux is the absolutely enormous support base that Windows has. The moment it becomes more problematic to use Windows than to just deal with the support issues of a Linux OS is the moment that everyone will switch to Linux.

I actually really doubt it’d ever go on by default for enterprise installations. One tiny slipup in GPO and IT departments could end up with the most massive explicit data leak in history, many many companies and governments working with very sensitive data would drop all Microsoft products in a heartbeat. Microsoft knows that is an impossible sell and really not worth the squeeze vs just shoving a larger dildo up the private consumer’s ass.

Just because you’re running pro doesn’t mean you don’t have domain policies.

Then that will be Microsoft’s captive audience upsell. “Ohhh don’t want us collecting your secrets? Damn better pay up for enterprise licenses…”

I use Linux privately, and haven’t had a Windows OS on my PC in years except for a VM I needed for a university project. I’m all for hoping that specialised apps get developed for Linux too. I like mine and would probably enjoy using it for private purposes too, but it won’t work with wine and learning different tools is obviously an additional time investment in my free time compared to the one I get paid for learning.

But I’m both quick and happy to learn. Many people are not (and I see that daily with my users). The cost of switching and disruption in productivity would probably be disastrous enough to ruin the company even before considering the fact that “industry giant unable to fulfill contractual obligations because they have to rebuild half their infrastructure from nothing” would be a crippling blow to its professional reputation in an industry where IT is still considered second-class at best, the ideological gain of no longer depending on Microsoft would net them nothing and in an economic system where short-term profitability is more important than long-term independence.

And that’s not considering the difficulty of convincing company leadership that Windows really is that bad and Linux really is much better and that we only need to provide the financial incentive and invest the time and money to have someone port already expensive software to a different platform. FFS, we’re still struggling to get people to see IT as a service rather than an expense.

Finally, even if they were to switch out their entire IT infrastructure, they’d start asking whether it would be cheaper to outsource our internal IT to a company that already knows the new stuff than to retrain all of us. I’d very much like to keep my permanent position, even if it means using Windows.

Inertia is a hell of a thing to try and overcome. It’s a big deal for most companies to change out an important piece of software, let alone an entire OS and everything that comes with it. It could happen one day, I just don’t expect to see it.