[kbolino]

Home users generally don't pay for Windows. It comes with their computers and the major version upgrades are free and have been for quite some time; 7→8 (2012) was the last time it wasn't free but 7→10 (2015) was a valid, free upgrade path so most just bypassed 8 entirely (and they were better off for it because 8 sucked). Since Windows 7 was itself released in 2009, most home users haven't paid for Windows upgrades in 16 years.

[Krssst]

Yes, having to maintain an OS over multiple years without recurring revenue might be an issue indeed. On my side I wouldn't mind paying a subscription if the OS could respect my choices. But I guess it does not really make sense to provide a subscription that only a very small handful of people would pay.

(I wonder how subscriptions could handle multiple machines; today it often happens that people have multiple computers but subscription cost would quickly add up; I guess they could have different tiers with different allowed concurrent use count)