cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/48806122

A license verification certificate expires and when it expires, Microsoft Office for Mac assumes it’s unlicensed even if it has been fully paid for.

So, any idiot who paid for Office 2019 for Mac “perpetual” will lose access to it next month.

The same will happen with Office 2021 and Office 2024 in the future.

Pirates are unaffected, only who paid for the product gets punished

Good job 👍🏻

  • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Rossman posted a video a while ago about how Microsoft updated their site without noting they updated it to gaslight their customers into thinking it’s always said that.

    There’s a reason these companies are trying to kill the archive sites, it lets people call them on their bullshit.

    Edit: YouTube source

  • neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    This is pretty wild to see. Based on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Office

    Some people could have purchased this as late as early October 2021.

    If companies are going to literally steal things from the user, then why would I buy anything from them in the future?

    This is a clear sign to everyone to not buy anything from Microsoft moving forward, because they clearly think they can just take it back at any time.

    • poopkins@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      It’s an appeal directly to the thriving community of intellectual property pirates here on Lemmy in order to make the post directly to the front page.

    • PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      It can sometimes be annoying when news communities require posts to use an article’s original headline, but it definitely makes sense at times.

    • Peanut@sopuli.xyz
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      5 days ago

      I hate how people getting scammed by near monopolistic monoliths casually being fraudulent in their advertisements is them being “idiots” rather than just victims who haven’t spent their whole life navigating the myriad ways billionaires are researching to more elegantly fuck us. Why consumer protection is supposed to be a thing, why anti-trust is supposed to be a thing, and people are trapped between fascists and a “tactical vote” alternative that has done very little to stop the fascists from casually dismantling these protections.

      Good job media for always individualizing the problem and blaming the victims.

  • Blindsite@lemmy.today
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    5 days ago

    Yet another reason to stick with LibreOffice and other FOSS open source software.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    I was about to purchase some legitimate licenses for MS products when this was first announced.

    saved myself the money and trouble and just pirated it.

    fuck em

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I’m not sure I’m cool with calling people ‘idiots’ in this scenario. We don’t blame the victims of con men when they’re stolen from, and this is the same thing, just on a bigger scale.

    That said, here is the obligatory linking to LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/

    It’s free and a better choice.

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      7 days ago

      We need to keep focusing on stuff like this. If somebody calls you a fucking idiot so fucking what?

      And we do blame the victims constantly. The people that blame the victims do nothing but fucking win.

      • CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        And some of us ARE idiots, no need to throw us under the bus, it’s still wrong to take advantage of stupid people

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        I read it as someone kinda being a dick, but it’s the Internet. Meaning isn’t always well-conveyed electronically. That’s why we have the sarcasm tag.

        • Simon_Shitewood@lemmy.ml
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          7 days ago

          Had you gone as far as the article you would have seen the disclaimer that makes it clear it’s sarcasm.

          • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            I did.

            The title of the article is ‘Microsoft is disabling Office 2019 for Mac next month’, which makes it pretty clear that the editorializing of the title here on Lemmy was intended to be a bit dickish, at least to me.

            If I am wrong, cool, but it’s not because I didn’t look at the article.

    • Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      And for anyone who says in excel I can create a spreadsheet sheet that does this amazing company defining process, I’ll counter that with you can make a calculator in Minecraft. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

  • Dvixen@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Not surprised in the least. It’s all about maintaining incoming cash flow.

    They cancelled my Win11 (from purchased Win10 eligible upgrade) key earlier this year when I replaced a failed motherboard.

    Happy to be free of their ecosystem. Should have jumped free long ago.

      • Dvixen@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Thanks! Still having some problems with sound popping, but had that under Windows. >.<

          • Dvixen@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            Mint. I’ve gotten the popping/crackling to a minimum, but it’s still happening occasionally. (Oddly it happens most often with games that have sound disabled both by OS and via in game)

            • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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              6 days ago

              It was annoying enough I saved it, I highly recommend starting some sort of docs setup so future you can remember how you fixed things. This fixed it for me, granted I was on pop but both Ubuntu based so same layers underneath.

              Audio Crackling

              You can fix this by increasing the minimum audio buffer size, which, in turn, will increase the overall audio latency.

              It’s not good for real-time professional audio recording, but it won’t hurt the general gaming and multimedia experience unless you use a very high value to the point it leads to a noticeable desync with video. Test with a greater minimum quantum

              This takes effect immediately, but it won’t persist across reboots.

              This worked for me

              pw-metadata -n settings 0 clock.min-quantum 2048
              

              Increasing the minimum quantum permanently

              The default is 1024.

              cat << EOF > ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/fix-crackle.conf context.properties = { default.clock.min-quantum = 2048 } EOF
              systemctl --user restart pipewire wireplumber
              

              You can revert this by just deleting the file. Alternative method

              This will improve the handling of low-latency audio at the expense of overall higher CPU usage and with that, power usage.

              sudo kernelstub -a threadirqs reboot

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      7 days ago

      Seem to have worked for this fucking shitty ass president. And his shitty ass fucking party. And I’ll be honest it seems to work for every major corporation.

      The victim blaming definitely works, Just ask anybody who was raped.

  • Zorcron@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    OOP’s comment on the original post that the cross-poster should have shared:

    Disclaimer: I wrote “idiot” to describe someone who paid for the product not because they’re actually idiots, but it’s because Microsoft is treating them like that: their official solution on the website is “simply subscribe to the latest and greatest or buy a new “perpetual” license to office 2024 to continue using what you paid for”

  • melfie@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    Not even worth pirating when there are better open source alternatives.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      7 days ago

      That’s all it is, which is why it’s so obvious they just want people to subscribe now. Very issue is the smallest thing they could do, and they can’t be bothered.

      Folks tell your Mac friends about Libre Office

        • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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          7 days ago

          This isn’t that some architecture isn’t supported or there’s some new unseen dependency that failed, it’s a cert expiry. Something that happens millions of times per day and can be completely automated.

            • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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              6 days ago

              Seeing how it’s a trillion dollar company, I think they can spare the few pennies to renew a cert, even 50 years later to keep the “lifetime” license going for everyone. They’re not asking for new features or individual support. We’re all saying it’s a cert. Take the few minutes to renew it.

    • BillCheddar@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      So that means Microsoft doesn’t need to honor their contracts with users?

      Interesting legal strategy, cotton.

  • nullspace@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    What lawyerspeak TOS bullshit are they going to cite as a way to avoid refunds and lawsuits?

    • Railcar8095@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      That’s EOL and they won’t do any additional support. Renew certificates is 1 hours of intern effort and 20 bucks, so fuck you.

      *effort and cost made up, but l considering they made billions with office, it’s basically equivalent.

  • fodor@lemmy.zip
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    6 days ago

    If people are buying such software on their own dime, they’re getting played. Happens once, OK you didn’t know it was a con job. Happens twice, you’re a fool…

    But if it’s on your company’s dime, meh, not your problem.

    • CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Absolutely fair points but I think it should be illegal to sell a “perpetual” license - perpetual means everlasting - and then it turns out to not be perpetual

      They should be forced to honor the perpetual contracts

      • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Yeah, I’d say they’d be looking at a class action suit if it weren’t for the fact that it’s just so easy to apply a pirate crack.