Should Windows be Free?

There are different meanings of "free" in this conversation. As the phrase goes "Free as in speech, not as in Beer". In one case free refers to open sourcing the code, and in the other, it means being available free of cost or licencing fee.

I suppose my question could be interpreted either way. In the free of cost point of view, they did with IE back in the Netscape era, and giving away Windows would certainly impact competition with Linux and Apple.

Some argue that Microsoft's own practices propagate much of the security issues we have today for example, if Windows was free this wouldn't happen (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2355982,00.asp). We would also not have to worry about Virtual Machines being considered entirely knew instances of the computer. The world would be such a simpler place if there was no need for hacked copies of Windows operating without security updates. How much of the botnet activity on the Internet can be traced to this? Consequently, I would be out of a job, as would entire research companies.

I won't get into the economic dilema's of solving problems entire industries are built around, but the term "disruptive technology" comes to mind. What would be more disruptive than an Open Source Windows OS? If Windows 7 was believed to be secure, and the average price of a laptop or desktop was nearly a factor of 10 less than Macintosh ($300 vs $3000 after hardware upgrades) how would that impact Apple? If the Open Source community were willing to use Windows would Linux be necessary?

Either way, an alternative revenue model would have to be created. Programmers deserved to be paid too. Whether this would be any better or worse than what we currently deal with would remain to be seen.