Our top IT stories: Windows 10 forced upgrades, secrets of O365, and Linux Foundation to the rescue

Computing's most read stories from the last seven days.

7. The Linux Foundation: How to fix the internet

Many of the vital components of the internet - such as GPG - are maintained by a tiny number of amateur developers. The Linux Foundation's solution is to bring developers and firms together to raise and apportion funds and resources to those projects deemed crucial to the safe running of the internet.

"Because the software we depend on is open source, we have access to the code, we know who writes it, and we can leverage shared testing tools," explained executive director Jim Zemlin. "And because everyone in the world depends on it, we think we can get lots of people together to fix it."

6. Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrating the world's first computer programmer

As Lord Byron's only legitimate daughter, Augusta "Ada", Countess of Lovelace, grew up under the watchful eyes of her mother, Anne Isabella Noel, who steered her towards maths and logic in an effort to avoid developing the poetry-fuelled "insanity" of her infamous father.

Lovelace's own obsession with the concept of madness led her to an interest in phrenology, which in turn led her to attempt to create a mathematical model of the brain - a "calculus of the nervous system", as she called it. Lovelace's interest in the inner-workings of complex machinery led her eventually to Charles Babbage and his, at the time, unmade Analytical Engine.

5. Microsoft's Windows 10 giveaway fails to spark a spike in PC sales

The release of Microsoft's new operating Windows 10 has failed to stimulate the hoped-for spike in PC sales - instead, helping sales to fall further as people took advantage of Microsoft's free-upgrade offer.

4. Privacy organisations want a full investigation into the Experian T-Mobile hack

Questions are being raised as to how hackers managed to get hold of data on 15 million T-Mobile customers.

"If the server holding the T-Mobile files was subject to fewer security protections than the full Experian credit reporting database, why?" asks PIRG consumer program director Ed Mierzwinski.

"If it was subject to the same protections as the credit reporting server, doesn't this raise the troubling possibility that the server holding highly sensitive credit and personal information of over 200 million Americans is vulnerable to a data hack by identity thieves?" he asks.

3. Microsoft releases record number of patches for the year with October Patch Tuesday

Microsoft has released a record number of patches this year, with its October 2015 Patch Tuesday making it 111 security bulletins released in a single year, beating 2013's figure of 106.

2. The things they don't tell you about moving to Microsoft Office 365

Mimecast's Orlando Scott-Cowley described some of the challenges in moving to Microsoft's cloud-based office suite during a recent Computing web seminar.

"We find that the move changes the risk profile for organisations, in terms of their security, continuity, retention and data assurance. You're closing what is sometimes a 15 to 20 year-old infrastructure on the network, and moving into the cloud, and that's no easy move," he said.

1. You WILL have Windows 10 whether you want it or not, as Windows 7 upgrade patches come back to life

Microsoft is so determined to hit its target of Windows 10 on a billion devices by 2017 that it appears to be adopting some rather dubious practices. And what are those mysterious "snooping patches" KB 2952664 and KB 2976978 doing exactly?

The forced march to Windows 10 was our top story this week.