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Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

consumerrights.wiki

191–200 of 401 posts

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#191

This is the new way and we need to stop it now. Forget the 'is it legal or not' arguments, their lawyers will win. Just get mad and tell them this is wrong. Stop buying their #$@#$ software. Block them. This is what is wrong with cars too. Don't want to give them real time data on you and your passengers and instead try to disconnect the modem? Well, no car functionality for you even if it doesn't need it. -get mad-…

This has been happening with Video Games for a while. There is a major initiative called "Stop Killing Games" which was triggered when Ubisoft bricked "The Crew" when servers were shutdown. https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ There has been some success. There is new legislation in California which has passed the Assembly. https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/22330/stop-killing-game... And there is a citizens initiativ…

It's good legislation. I would love to see this extended to "Stop Killing Software" in general, with the same provisions.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do class action litigation, but that takes years and the lawyers collect 30-50% of any settlement. The economics for customers don't make sense.

Not even as a deterrence?

Go find some class action settlements. There’s a good chance the total damages (substantially) less than the profits from whatever behavior generated the lawsuit, and that’s not even accounting for interest.

So, no.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#193

This is the new way and we need to stop it now. Forget the 'is it legal or not' arguments, their lawyers will win. Just get mad and tell them this is wrong. Stop buying their #$@#$ software. Block them. This is what is wrong with cars too. Don't want to give them real time data on you and your passengers and instead try to disconnect the modem? Well, no car functionality for you even if it doesn't need it. -get mad-…

This has been happening with Video Games for a while. There is a major initiative called "Stop Killing Games" which was triggered when Ubisoft bricked "The Crew" when servers were shutdown. https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ There has been some success. There is new legislation in California which has passed the Assembly. https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/22330/stop-killing-game... And there is a citizens initiativ…

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Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#194
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this won't be their first time breaking Australian Consumer Law... Twelve months ago no less! https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/microsoft-in-court-for... The ACCC is going to love this.

Every time someone imagines a country going after Microsoft in a serious way these days, I wonder how much that country's government depends on Microsoft software and cloud infrastructure, and if that country imagines Microsoft would continue to allow them to use such things if they become an enemy of Microsoft in court.

Microsoft's key customers aren't consumers, its business and government: specifically enterprise licensing agreements. If Microsoft seriously upset business and governments, they wouldn't be profitable, if in business at all, not long after that.

Because of Microsoft's dominant position considering near ubiquitous penetration of Microsoft Office in government, one part of government will slap Microsoft on the wrist for anti-consumer practices, whilst other parts will still continue to purchase Office (and other products) because there simply isn't another product that competes directly feature-by-feature and compatibility (and usability in part), which matters in (often archaic) government processes.

It would cost far too much money to try to migrate away, at least at this point. Euro-Office[1] seems poised, if not likely, to dramatically shift that balance once it becomes a key part of EU government machinery.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft responds to Euro-Office. If it takes off, it could invigorate other government efforts to fork Euro-Office and replace Microsoft's suite of tools. Someone just needs to put the business case to the relevant federal government stakeholders comparing the cost of (on-going) licensing vs. the cost of building an internal development team to maintain a fork for their whole-of-government machinery.

Given that there is a fair bit of EU and NATO overlap population-wise, if a significant portion of EU-based NATO countries adopt Euro-Office exclusively, I would suggest Euro-Office then poses an existential threat to Microsoft Office, and perhaps Microsoft's business productivity pursuits.

The moat that software companies had back in the 90s and 2000s before the Internet really took off, was distributing software by physical media. The Internet (as much as I have nostalgia for physical media) completely obliterated that model for mass-distribution productivity software, and indeed many others.

I'm certainly keen to give Euro-Office a test run, since the code is freely available (on GitHub too, ironically[2]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro-Office [2] https://github.com/Euro-Office

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#195

If not for the fact that some commercial software addons work only in Excel I'll be using only Libreoffice for everything. In fact that's the only major thing that's stopping me from totally abandoning Windows for Linux as well. I'm guessing that's the situation for several others though there could be other use cases that's Excel only. Instead of pressing Microsoft, it would probably make sense to force such vendors…

Which commercial Excel addons do you depend on currently?

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#197

Been using LibreOffice for years. Everyone should. If we don't vote with our choices companies like Microsoft will keep pushing the envelope until you have to pay a monthly fee to turn on your own computer. https://www.libreoffice.org/

Other options include Calligra (especially on KDE) https://calligra.org And Macs are bundled with Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, all of which are excellent.

Numbers is not excellent. It’s stubborn and unhelpful.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#198
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been happening with Video Games for a while. There is a major initiative called "Stop Killing Games" which was triggered when Ubisoft bricked "The Crew" when servers were shutdown. https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ There has been some success. There is new legislation in California which has passed the Assembly. https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/22330/stop-killing-game... And there is a citizens initiativ…

[flagged]

> I think you should be allowed to stop supporting software or shut down your servers.

That has nothing to do with Stop Killing Games.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#199
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been happening with Video Games for a while. There is a major initiative called "Stop Killing Games" which was triggered when Ubisoft bricked "The Crew" when servers were shutdown. https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ There has been some success. There is new legislation in California which has passed the Assembly. https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/22330/stop-killing-game... And there is a citizens initiativ…

[flagged]

You should not be able to shut down the ability to play a game if it cost money to buy.

Re: Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

#200

This is the new way and we need to stop it now. Forget the 'is it legal or not' arguments, their lawyers will win. Just get mad and tell them this is wrong. Stop buying their #$@#$ software. Block them. This is what is wrong with cars too. Don't want to give them real time data on you and your passengers and instead try to disconnect the modem? Well, no car functionality for you even if it doesn't need it. -get mad-…

"Their lawyers will win" is plainly wrong assumption if something is clearly illegal.
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