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Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion

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

#361

Post by kopirgan »

edg5000 wrote: post #195
kopirgan wrote: post #137

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?

Not me but my customers so that affects me as well. Mainly Oracle

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

#362

Post by dangus »

codedokode wrote: post #112
anigbrowl wrote: post #73

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.

The Office 2024 license quoted in comment [1] says that "class action lawsuits ... aren't allowed" (but only if you live in US). Truly free country where you a free to even waive your right to sue. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48341968

Another option is to actually take them to arbitration. There are starting to be law firms that specialize in mass-filing multiple arbitration suits instead of class actions and they are pretty interesting because some companies are finding it more difficult to deal with than class action lawsuits.

That said, EULAs are also often written in ways that are unenforceable. Just because a company says they get something doesn’t mean the law agrees.

Does the judge in my small claims case give a shit about the EULA if the defendant fails to show up?

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

#363

Post by wizzwizz4 »

1over137 wrote: post #340
zelphirkalt wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More incentives to move off MS products. MS sales and marketing are just geniuses! I hope one day they will eat the consequences.

We've been waiting 40 years for that "one day". I wouldn't bet on it. :(

This doesn't happen without a lot of hard work. Want to help? See https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2014/07/how-i-got-the-uk-government... for inspiration.

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

#364

Post by thewebguyd »

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #304
pmontra wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft is the enemy This made me smile, sadly. I remember when Microsoft was the new darling not many years ago, because of VS Code and WSL and the apparent goodwill about open source. Some people and I, who lived through all of Microsoft, were skeptical and believed that it was only another embrace phase of their EEE pattern. I'm not sure if they are extinguishing something but it turns out that they are squeez…

A lot of developers (and thereby most on HN, I guess) see Microsoft only from the perspective of a private consumer. From the perspective of a normal non-technical company though, Microsoft is this giant that has spread its products throughout your organisation like a cancer and you can never free yourself from it. For Microsoft's main business it's irrelevant if VSCode is mostly open source or not. That is why these…

There's also business value in "good enough" that Microsoft satisfies for enterprises. You get a lot of stuff "for free" with something like an E5 license: EDR, DLP, MDM, a full cloud IAM system, and a ton of cross app magic for the lowest common denominator of non-technical employees that you just aren't going to get without spending considerable developer effort to piece together a stack yourself.

What looks like cancer to us looks like a massive reduction in operational risk to a CFO/CIO.

This is especially true if your core business has nothing to do with software or tech. Much easier to cut a check to Redmond. Microsoft is basically a utility company for enterprise now, it's commoditized IT. "Do what you do best, outsource the rest."

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

#365

Post by dangus »

r-johnv wrote: post #54
dangus wrote: post #8

I would encourage affected customers to go to small claims court. You’ll probably get a default judgment. Small claims court was created for just this type of issue.

But you most likely signed a binding arbitration clause in the TOS

Did I sign anything? EULAs aren’t necessarily 100% enforceable.

What would a reasonable person expect out of the transaction?

Which promises and verbiage in the marketing material contradict the EULA?

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

#366

Post by BetterThanSober »

I don't like the fact that a company can literally steal purchased product back from its users but I don't see how any company can realistically support a product for a long period of time, especially if it is a B2C perpetual license product

If Office 2019 got a zero day RCE just by opening a Word documents, the optics would be tremendously bad for Microsoft and they had to patch it, which cost money and time. We're on a day where zero day can be found using AI, and it's getting better at it every iterations. No, saying that it is EOL and "yeah not my problem" wouldn't fly at their scale, just see XP and how long they have to extend the support period

I'm not saying "but think of the multi-billion dollar company", I'm sure they can support it indefinitely, I'm just not sure if doing that is a good use of engineer's time

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

#367

Post by shimman »

Rohansi wrote: post #295
ornornor wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VS Code was released in 2015, so even if its initial release somehow completely stopped the entire software industry, it would still not have held the industry back by several decades. Why not? That’s 11 years, times (say) 5 potential independent editors or IDE that didn’t exist because of VSCode in that time is over 50 years worth of software innovation.

How does the existence of VSCode stop the creation of other editors? The existence of other editors clearly didn't prevent VSCode from being created, so what's different?

Oh easy, you can't compete with a trillion dollar corporation that can subsidize loss leaders. We know there is a substantial market in this space if Zed is able to raised $30mil, but only letting VC or big tech dictate the direction of tooling is extremely troublesome.

I, along with every other person in tech I know, would love to start a company but the biggest risk is lack of health insurance; which is why things like medicare for all are sorely needed if we want to improve the space by introducing more competition.

Which is why you also need to specifically tax companies like MSFT to publicly subsidize alternatives.

I mean how much would something like neovim or emacs or helix or neovide improve if they could hire a team of full time developers? Why should economic value both be dictated and captured by a small set of people? I rather have this be guided by a consortium of developers in the form of open source grants.

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

#368

Post by xerox13ster »

broknbottle wrote: post #146
xingped wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legality has long since lost literally any meaning to megacorps and the ultra-wealthy pretty much everywhere. Doesn't matter what country they're breaking the laws in. The only penalty will be a paltry slap on the wrist fine (if even) and they will continue doing whatever they want. I mean, it's just the cost of doing business, isn't it?

Penalties should scale based on net worth.

And at a certain net worth the the scale becomes so large, the penalty for fucking up should be an hour/day in prison with no bail or parole for every person negatively affected.

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

#369

Post by altairprime »

avazhi wrote: post #301
altairprime wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As described, the licensing system will fail you into readonly locally unless you subscribe Office Clippy 365, buy Office 2024, apply Office 2021 updates, or (not listed) apply third-party licensing cracks for Office 2019. Presumably we’ll know soon if network firewalling the licensing server helps, but I expect it’ll just delay the intentional failure by a few months at best.

Presumably this will happen to Offica 2021 in two years, too, so it's actually worse than you say.

Possibly, yes?

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

#370

Post by ryandrake »

wilg wrote: post #296
ryandrake wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should at least have to refund customers when you take away the ability to use a product they purchased.

This is fair for some reasonable time window after purchase. But I think it's okay for things to have a lifespan even if they cost money.

As long as the life span is clearly spelled out when you purchase, so you know that you are actually buying a 10 year subscription, and not a game.
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