Bad news for insiders they will have to give up a key for the RTM.

CountMike said:

Wander how much some professionals in IT would get payed to test early versions of an OS ?

More than the price of Windows
Quality Assurance Specialist I Salary | Salary.com

Olivir2014 said:

As I understand it, Windows Insider program will continue and the W7+ license requirement will be for getting a W10 license (for free for 1 year). Windows Insider membership does not and will not give you a W10 license. It grants you access to more or less buggy being-worked-on builds of future W10 updates, which will all eventually expire.

Olivir2014,
That is still speculation. I have a quandary. I triple boot between Windows 7 OEM, Windows 10 pro preview and Xubuntu. If I understand the licensing correctly, I wont be able to keep that set up. It will have to be a dual boot W7 OEM and Xubuntu or W10 and Xubuntu. I will be dropping out of the insider program if they require a previous license to keep testing builds after the RTM. Unlike most people here, I am not made of money. So, I don't have another version I could upgrade from.

blackroseMD1 said:

I know more than a couple of people who were running pirated versions of XP/7/8 that grabbed the tech preview just so they could get a free OS. I'm fine with MS requiring a valid key. Why reward people who have ripped you off in the past?

I am not taking about pirated versions. There should be a way to separate those from the legit or clean installs.

alphanumeric said:

If Microsoft was to give everybody that clean installed the preview a free upgrade to the RTM they may as well just give out Windows 10 to anybody that wants it. It would amount to the same thing. Everybody and their dog would sign up just to get Windows 10 for free. And for those that think Microsoft owes them something for being a tester, they gave you access to the OS before anybody else. They don't owe you anything. Also, you volunteered in the first place, nobody forced you to do it? This free isn't free enough stuff is getting old.

Actually, real simple fix. Issue keys to people who signed up before July 1st, 2014 or before the rtm comes whichever comes first. (Yes, I am aware there may not be an RTM but news articles keep saying there will be.) Another way, is have insiders sign-up for free windows 10 full install disk that will be mailed to you by Microsoft. This will keep others from signing up for the preview,

All sorts of ways Microsoft could give away various goodies, but I've seen no indication that's their intention or that they're going to do it.

Slartybart said:

More than the price of Windows
Quality Assurance Specialist I Salary | Salary.com

And for that salary you'd expect to get someone who is trained in testing techniques and test tools, possibly including test automation tools, who would thoroughly test specific areas in a planned way with test scripts, expected results etc. So for instance some poor souls have probably spent a few days of their life *just* testing Calculator.

As opposed to just running the OS and randomly exploring and trying a few things out, and perhaps running my favourite application - which is what I do with Windows 10... and I bet I'm pretty typical of insiders.

And while a large enough volume of people doing random things will find a good chunk of bugs, it's no substitute for having some specific and focussed testing which I'm sure MS do as well.

I have taken win 8.1 off laptop and restored it back to win 7 so I can keep win 8.1 key
installed enterprise 10130 over win 7 and so far working fine.

Funny
11 pages and 109 comments in this tread because someone's misinterpretation of a statement and wrote about it using other terminology that meant different things to others.
You guys worry way too much.