Look, I am all for free market without government control. But what MS has done over the years with their anti-trust and extortion business model and practice is just shy of criminal. If we were talking about a different company I might agree with you.
I lived it play by play. Starting with making sure that the OS steals back any new processing capacity or speed with unneeded bloat to slow it right back down. To this day in their arrogant greed they STILL do this crap to take away any advantage new faster processors and bus speeds give us. As soon as computers speed up MS slows them right back down on purpose with bloat crap. They think that processing and speed belongs to them and their crap.
It has been crooked business from the get go. They are the very example of crooked business. In fact, their crooked extortion business models spread to everything else in the world. We didn’t have that business model before Microsoft.
They are sadistic greedy monopolists who get off on abusing their customers. And they make sure that no one can compete with them by extorting the manufacturers into collaborating with their extortion. No they are criminals who force their garbage on their customers because they have a monopoly and control 95% of the market. And they have made sure they locked out competition with anti-trust practices.
Now they are to the point where their product is not even an OS, it is a glorified smart phone to access cloud based accounts and app subscriptions. They can’t even honestly claim they are an OS anymore. So they have rendered our computers as high priced app based smart phones with subscriptions. And they purposely did everything they could to make sure you cannot use an option on your own product you purchased.
In their arrogance it never belongs to you, it will forever belong to MS... There is only one car manufacturer and they have total control over what you can or cannot do with that car you paid good money for. And folks do not have a choice. Not everyone can afford a MAC. They are WAY over priced for most. It is stupid to pay that much more for a MAC. Their prices are not even close to being competitive.
I see your point but it is somewhat analogous to unions.
In the beginning there was a place for unions as a way to empower workers to get living wages. That time passed and collective bargaining is now a destructive & distorting force.
I think that there is room for another company(s) to swoop in and exploit the opportunity that MS furnished by offering a better product. Exposing the product gating aspects of MS offerings would help drive that process. IMO sunlight would be more efficient and have less unintended consequences than empowering bureaucrats. I agree cloud based subscription aps are not in consumer interest. They are a money tap for the corporation. I avoid whenever possible. It’s a pet hate of mine but I hate bureaucrats even more.