Power users forked his script a thousand times. YouTubers made videos titled "Microsoft HATES This One Weird Trick." The hashtag #FreeChris trended in tech circles. A lawyer from the Electronic Frontier Foundation reached out pro bono.
"Chris, your script saved my grandma's $300 Walmart special." "Chris, my work PC has 2GB of RAM. Your debloater gave it a second life." "Chris, the IT department banned me from running it. I ran it anyway. I regret nothing."
He called it the , partly out of ego, mostly because people kept asking "who made this?" He added a warning in bold red text: "I am not responsible if you nuke your install. Back up your data, you absolute raccoon." chris titus windows 10 debloater
"I just wanted to say thanks," the kid said. "I run your script on every refurbished PC I sell. You're the reason fifty families in my neighborhood have working computers."
Translation: We lost.
It was a blunt instrument. Like using a sledgehammer to remove a splinter. It worked, but it also broke things. His calculator vanished. The Photos app imploded. The next morning, his wife couldn’t print a shipping label.
One night, frustrated and fueled by cheap bourbon, Chris opened Notepad. He started writing. Power users forked his script a thousand times
One night, his GitHub repo received a DMCA takedown notice. Not from Microsoft directly, but from a third-party "security compliance firm" based in Delaware. The claim: his script "circumvented software protection mechanisms" and "violated the Windows End User License Agreement."