Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

neowin.net

71–80 of 106 posts

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#71
A LibreOffice dev gets locked out of his /hotmail account/ and neowin turns this into a Microsoft developer ban? Specious reporting.

Mike doesn't make this claim in the original source: https://mikekaganski.wordpress.com/2025/07/25/microsoft-anyb...

Hotmail/outlook support isn't great (I've had a similar challenge but it was eventually resolved), google support is worse (a similar challenge, eventually denied).

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#72
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a possible very high return for taking that risk (as the unicorn businesses do) then do it in full knowledge of the risk. I am not convinced those businesses are good examples. Could they have redeployed elsewhere if they had to? Where they tied to one supplier? Did they have backups else where? Most businesses and individuals do not have to take that risk and can avoid it.

The key insight is that mitigating risk isn’t a free action. No business has the bandwidth to avoid even most of the risks they could in principle avoid; you allocate some effort towards the ones that make sense to mitigate, and hope the others don’t come to pass.

But relying on other people's kingdom isn't free either, that comes with a cost.

The fallacy I hear often is that because something like AWS is sooo much more expensive than co-location or VPS, that it must be easier.

Yeah, it can be... sometimes. It almost never is. You trade off the complexity for new complexity. You replace your sysadmins with Dev Ops. It's not like it just magically gets better.

It's the same way with a lot of things. A more expensive car is not necessarily better. It can be, sometimes, if you're very careful and know what you're doing. More expensive clothes aren't better either. Popularity factors into this, too. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's good. Plenty of really shitty things become popular.

You can absolutely build your application without relying on other companies too much. I'm not saying you need to go rogue, but you also don't need to use every single Google feature under the sun to, like, display some photos. And, if you do that, that's actually probably way worse and more expensive (effort + money) than if you didn't.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#73
post #15

I don't really see the story here. Just the LibreOffice dev got locked out of his account. Seems like an automated system that failed, which isn't exactly a revelation that false positives occur. Feels like this is meant to stir up OS war drama and make it seem like Microsoft is trying to prevent LibreOffice from succeeding.

You mean the part where the appeal was denied as the safety net of false positives? The fact that the site asks you to login to get support on not being able to login isn't a story? The fact they told him they'd help every step of the way only to ghost him? Are we supposed to have been beaten down to the point that none of this is a story? Granted, it is only one side of the story. We have no idea what other things t…

Appeals are not safety nets for false positives. Making online support require a login is extremely common. However there are other methods of communication to get support. Support not calling you back is not a story. Come on now.

Having a bad support experience is not being "beaten down". Talk about hyperbolic. If this is a systemic issue, that could be a story. But why isn't my grandmother's bad experience at Costco story? My friend had to call his ISP to sort a billing mistake. Is that a story now too?

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#74
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in one of the states that hasn't yet added one of these laws. I expect it will become a federal bill in a year or two so there aren't 20 variants of the same law. You can really feel the "big tent" nature of the GOP when these bills are being pushed despite being absolutely abhorrent to large swaths of Republican voters.

I voted for Trump and would make the same choice today without hesitation but agree the Republicans pushing this state by state age identification is pretty bad. State level Rs and house reps leave a bit to be desired. My vote is essentially a vote against the other party. Sometimes we have to choose between the best of two less than perfect choices. Politics is so often a deal with the devil against a worse devil

Can't really say I agree after being quite pleased with Biden's admin—would have been more than happy with the sequel. I clearly don't see the same thing you see in this guy but at least someone is happy and optimistic about it. A center left Democrat reaching across the isle so hard it pissed off her own base and with a platform of not rocking the boat sounds way better than whatever this mess is.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#75

Do not trust Microsoft, Google or any other company to provide backups... Have at least one backup/copy of your own data on your own hardware. I have onedrive, google-drive and dropbox copied to my nas as well as my desktop and laptop. Other projects are in github or gitlab and copied on my nas. That said, I should better automate my project backups... I also need to get my backup (redundant) NAS at a friends house (…

Google is good in this regard as you can schedule a takeout and get a complete dump. Stick that on a drive that is running backblaze and do periodic physical backups.

Absolutely! I do this yearly. It's a great way to ensure that a SNAFU somewhere doesn't nuke years of photos, email and documents.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#76
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I voted for Trump and would make the same choice today without hesitation but agree the Republicans pushing this state by state age identification is pretty bad. State level Rs and house reps leave a bit to be desired. My vote is essentially a vote against the other party. Sometimes we have to choose between the best of two less than perfect choices. Politics is so often a deal with the devil against a worse devil

Can't really say I agree after being quite pleased with Biden's admin—would have been more than happy with the sequel. I clearly don't see the same thing you see in this guy but at least someone is happy and optimistic about it. A center left Democrat reaching across the isle so hard it pissed off her own base and with a platform of not rocking the boat sounds way better than whatever this mess is.

I hear exactly what you are saying. I voted for Biden and Clinton before. The country went insane from 2020 thru 24 and the concealing of Biden’s decline was atrocious. For me the left just went to far. I have 2 white heterosexual sons and I could not vote for a party that declared them an enemy. Everything else was downstream of that for me. Ill vote for the bad guy before I vote for that. Trump has actually surprised me, delivering on many of the issues I voted for him on. If I have to endure his grift and other flaws its a price I’ll pay. I voted against what the Dems offered.

I completely understand and empathize with why some people are upset or even dismayed at what he’s doing though; i just think it’s necessary.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#77
post #7

As I hear stories of Apple, Google, and Microsoft revoking valuable access, I remember this article... "Don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms." https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/11/01/dont-build-your-cast...

When did it happen in Apple land?

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#78
post #61
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in one of the states that hasn't yet added one of these laws. I expect it will become a federal bill in a year or two so there aren't 20 variants of the same law. You can really feel the "big tent" nature of the GOP when these bills are being pushed despite being absolutely abhorrent to large swaths of Republican voters.

Sure would have been great if, in 2016 and 2024 elections, the democrats had nominated someone who could have beat Trump. Or conversely, had not nominated the two people who didn't stance a chance. But yeah, keep railing against the GOP.

Im not sure anyone could have beaten Trump. It was his time, the prior 4 years pushed many over to his base. I voted for Clinton and Biden but there was no one that could have gotten me to vote Dem last election

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#79
post #7

As I hear stories of Apple, Google, and Microsoft revoking valuable access, I remember this article... "Don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms." https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/11/01/dont-build-your-cast...

In this day and age, it is almost impossible for certain businesses not to build on someone's else kingdom. Facebook, instagram, uber, lyft, doordash, instacart, and hundreds of unicorn businesses are literally built on top of ecosystems that are controlled by 2 or 3 companies.

> In this day and age, it is almost impossible for certain businesses not to build on someone's else kingdom.

No it is not

It is often difficult and expensive, relative to letting Facebook (or the like) do the hosting.

But VPSs are a thing, you can run almost any software on them.

Stretching the analogy: Build your castle on your own bedrock, and build "forts", or "outposts", on the enemy territory

Ignoring Facebook et. el. is stupid, but depending on them is fool hardy

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#80
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this day and age, it is almost impossible for certain businesses not to build on someone's else kingdom. Facebook, instagram, uber, lyft, doordash, instacart, and hundreds of unicorn businesses are literally built on top of ecosystems that are controlled by 2 or 3 companies.

> In this day and age, it is almost impossible for certain businesses not to build on someone's else kingdom. No it is not It is often difficult and expensive, relative to letting Facebook (or the like) do the hosting. But VPSs are a thing, you can run almost any software on them. Stretching the analogy: Build your castle on your own bedrock, and build "forts", or "outposts", on the enemy territory Ignoring Facebook…

Thats not what other people's kingdoms means. Basically all non-trivial apps are already built on VPSs. The other people's kingdoms refers to how people interact with your app. Take Zynga - they were not literally running on FB servers, I'm sure they had their own VPS, but their games just had 0 reach outside of FB. When FB decided to change things Zynga just got fucked, VPS or not.
Post reply on HN