back to article How tech went from free love to pay-per-day

This year, along with all the usual in-depth technical talks about Linux at Red Hat's Devconf.cz developer conference, there were also several people there to promote AI-linked projects and the tech bros' previous favorites – blockchain projects. The promise of said projects is that they will change the world and relieve us of …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This isn't even restricted to software. YouTubers/streamers are always sponsored by scams like VPNs or online mental heath care systems that don't actually provide mental health care. Everyone is a scammer now and everything is a pyramid scheme. The only silver lining is that I'm not sure how many people actually fall for any of this, everyone has always publicly hated crypto/AI and you're kind of a fringe nutcase for being into them, even if you have a huge following.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      VPN is a scam?

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Usually not, but they advertise a lot, probably because the people who sign up don't use their service very much. In addition, they can at times be edging closer to the line. They often talk a lot about privacy without necessarily providing much themselves; yes, your local network won't be able to intercept your data if you've used it properly and they can't be blamed for people who don't, but if they keep tons of logs on your usage, they're not private. They can at times use other methods, for instance a VPN service whose advertisements focused a lot on watching region-locked content, but all their endpoints were well-known and blocked by a lot of content providers. They're not automatically scams, but I wouldn't trust everything in those advertisements.

      2. Mike007 Silver badge

        There are legitimate uses for VPNs... But the way the providers market themselves to people who don't have a legitimate need for such a thing through FUD is definitely in the realm of it being accurate to use the term "scam" to describe it.

        How many people signed up for a VPN service and leave it connected "because it encrypts my traffic" like they said in the ad? It is worth noting that the VPN sponsors pulled out of Tom Scott's famous video explaining what a VPN actually does...

        1. Andrew Scott Bronze badge

          he had later videos where he was sponsored by a vpn vendor. a corporate vpn has a legitimate reason for being, and there may be a use for a personal vpn. e.g. you might not trust your internet provider. you might not trust your businesses network. nearly everything is encrypted today anyways, but it may make the overly paranoid feel less stressed when they use their computers. not a bad thing for mental health.

          1. Mike007 Silver badge

            He does take VPN sponsorships, however when he said he was making a video specifically about if you really need a VPN, they refused to have their names associated with it...

            Personally if I was in the marketing team of a VPN provider and knew how many views that video would get I would have sponsored it for PR purposes, getting help from a comedian to write the talking points.

      3. Irongut Silver badge

        Depends on the VPN, most of them are a scam because they claim not to be logging your connections but they actually are and will roll over for Mr Polis in a fraction of a second.

      4. Stuart Castle Silver badge

        As noted elsewhere, VPN itself often isn't a scam. Don't get me wrong, there probably are VPN services that are scams, but if you go for someone like ExpressVPN, or NordVPN, they probably aren't. I use ExpressVPN for what it's worth.

        But the adverts do border on lie. A VPN provider should encrypt your traffic, and make it appear as though you are elsewhere. Depending on how things are set up, they may also provide access to ares of your network that are not normally accessible to the Internet (although most home users won't need this). They don't provide complete security. If you go to a dodgy website, a VPN won't stop viruses or trojans, they will just ensure that you appear to be elsewhere and your traffic is ecrypted.

        In fairness, their clients may offer protection against things like viruses or hackers, but this is seperate to the VPN.. But I've seen many ads that imply you don''t need any other security software when you use this or that VPN. That is dishonest.

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "But they're not identical, and many people don't want to relearn or take the time to switch."

    And yet Microsoft repeatedly switch UI, most egregiously when they introduced the ribbon interface. If you have a locked in user population you can do this, losing a few users at a time.

    1. Snake Silver badge

      Speaking the copium

      "Desktop FOSS OSes and the accompanying apps have been good enough for well over a decade. They're quicker and cheaper than their commercial rivals, just as safe and just as powerful."

      It's nice that [the author] says that to himself regardless of the actual truth. FOSS software in some markets - office productivity, DevOvs, specialized scientific supplications - has been good enough for more than a while now. But that is because the FOSS developers in those markets needed the solutions for themselves and worked hard in creating functioning solutions.

      On the other hand, mostly in the creative markets, FOSS software has historically lagged WAY, WAY behind their commercial counterparts. It was only in *2017* that a Linux competitor to Adobe Premier was released, Davinci Resolve, and only by around 2019 was it considered powerful enough to justify considering the switch. GIMP was no where powerful enough to replace Photoshop until very recently (adding CMYK in *2022*, v2.99.12, and it wasn't a stable release and therefore not recommended for pro use!), and most of the best Linux substitutes for Avid Pro Tools are themselves paid products.

      People here take their own limited needs and expand their FOSS experience of those needs being met to the wider world without actually doing any research or asking the people who have these alternate needs if THEIR requirements are being met. They AREN'T, and this is the real reason why FOSS OS desktop just hasn't reached the market penetration that FOSS supporters have been promising themselves for at least 2 decades.

      1. Adair Silver badge

        Re: Speaking the copium

        Nice hypothesis. If only it were that simple.

        Your explanation is really only partly true. Human behaviour is far more complex than just whether or not product A is the same as product B. Also, there is the whole issue of what FLOSS is actually all about, and the misguided assumption that it's all about emulating/supplanting Windows (or whatever bit of software happens to hold a monopolistic proprietary stranglehold over a cohort of users).

        As far as I am aware, at a basic philosophical level, FLOSS (as a human conceptual undertaking) is completely uninterested in whether or not it matches or supplants the 'monopolistic proprietary strangleholder'. Instead it's all about being able to scratch an itch, get a job done, and being able to share that ability without the 'money-grubbers' needing to have a say. If realising those aims happens to discomfort the 'monopolistic proprietary strangleholder' and associated 'money-grubbers' we may want to count that as a win, but it is, ultimately, beside the point.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Speaking the copium

          That comment wasn't about whether FOSS is trying to replace Windows, just if the claim of it being "just as safe and just as powerful" is accurate. Whether it is trying to be just as powerful, Liam has said that it has achieved that and Snake disagrees.

          I think Snake has it right here. FOSS software is not just as powerful as non-FOSS. In some areas, it is a lot more powerful, and in others, it is significantly lagging. I don't think that is likely to change, partially because of the reasons you state because it's not the goal to have a FOSS replacement for literally every piece of software out there.

          Here's a short example. I use a bunch of Linux computers, mostly servers, but some desktops. I also use Windows and Mac OS devices, all desktops. Why do I use them? I am blind. Each of those operating systems has a screen reader and I'm able to use all of them. The one screen reader on Linux is not that great. Sure, it works most of the time, but there are times when I'm using Linux where I find myself either unable to do something that I could easily do, or that I can do something, but it will take me ten times as long. A lot of people never face this situation, but they have their gaps as well. At some point, I intend to try to fix some of the deficiencies in Linux accessibility software, but I've been saying that for a bit and haven't done it, so you can argue that it's my fault. You can argue that because I have some chance of actually improving it. For a lot of users who aren't programmers, they do not have any reason to think they could improve the software, and when people tell them that Linux is as powerful as any alternative and they have an experience that shows that's wrong, they end up viewing the entire area more negatively. They aren't correct about their assumption that it's all shoddy stuff that we stick to for some religious reason they don't understand, but neither are we correct when we praise it more effusively than it deserves.

          1. Adair Silver badge

            Re: Speaking the copium

            That's perfectly fair to me too. But the truth is that 'all software is crap'. It's simply a case of choosing what degree of crapness you are willing/able to work with. This applies regardless of OS or application. Just because a piece of software in my situation/need suits me perfectly doesn't stop it being largely rubbish to someone else. There are no panaceas.

            So, Linux, Windows, OSX, Office, Thunderbird, Photoshop, ... - pick your poison and learn to make the most of it.

            1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

              Re: Speaking the copium

              I agree completely about the crapness. I use Linux Mint on five computers. It's awful, but Windows is worse, so I stick with LM. My hope is that the Haiku team get somewhere useful.

          2. Terry 6 Silver badge

            Re: Speaking the copium

            Reading this having just had another fruitless session trying to get my Linux (Zorin) laptoip to talk to my Windows PCs across my simple home network. Lots of following of suggestions from 'nux enthusiasts that don't work.

        2. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: Speaking the copium

          FOSS is certainly not all about supplanting Windows or proprietary, and the people who actually make it know that. However, to say that assuming it is misguided may be going too far. There are a lot of supporters of FOSS who do speak as if there is a struggle against proprietary versions. Whenever someone announces that, for example, a big organization is going to switch their desktops from Windows to Linux, people respond as if it's a victorious battle against their foe and that anyone who didn't do the same was making an obviously stupid choice because everything would be better if they did. People who watch this would be hard pressed to make that align with your characterization of "uninterested".

          We know that these are often separate groups. The people who make this stuff are often not the ones describing unrealistic evil plots by Microsoft (it's always Microsoft, why can't some other company be evil some time) to ensure that Linux dies next year. Those who are not as directly involved in multiple parts of this may not understand this. Someone nontechnical recently told me a joke which, unfortunately, I can't remember well enough to tell in a funny way, but the point was that Linux users were more annoying than all sorts of stereotypically annoying groups like telemarketers and Apple users. Those who don't know us but know a little probably have a similar thought in their mind, and it will take more than your statement to prove why this is not the case. Worse still, if they see that kind of argument and try using it, they may conclude that not only are there a lot of annoying evangelists, but those people are wrong because they said that an insufficient piece of FOSS software was as good as a proprietary one and it isn't.

          1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

            Re: Speaking the copium

            "Someone nontechnical recently told me a joke which, unfortunately, I can't remember well enough to tell in a funny way, but the point was that Linux users were more annoying than all sorts of stereotypically annoying groups like telemarketers and Apple users."

            This would be the same kind of person who doesn't understand that using email is a minimum requirement of IT literacy, and being completely owned by Facebook, X-shiter or whatever is lhe latest popular app, isn't a good thing. They don't understand what Internet is, and the distinction between proprietary and non-proprietary (being owned vs not being owned).

            Of course they think Linux people and the like are annoying, going on about not being owned tools...

            1. Richard 12 Silver badge

              Re: Speaking the copium

              And that post was a great example of why they think that.

              Most real people do not care what OS their computer runs. They just want to do something.

              1. Adair Silver badge

                Re: Speaking the copium

                Which is why they are open to being completely and repeatedly screwed over by malicious money grubbing agents (both criminal and corporate).

                Likewise, my car. I know how an ICE works, but these days I have very little idea about all the gubbins under the bonnet, or behind the dashboard, so I am easy meat for the money grubbers who are able to shaft me at every turn because I am at their mercy.

                It's great 'not caring'—so long as the ones who care on your behalf are trustworthy and competent.

              2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

                Re: Speaking the copium

                My post wasn't meant to be read by those people. Don't worry, I don't give a sh*t about people being tools. I certainly don't go on about Linux.

          2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

            Re: Speaking the copium

            There are a lot of supporters of FOSS who do speak as if there is a struggle against proprietary versions.

            See Ubuntu Bug #1, for example.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Speaking the copium

        "On the other hand, mostly in the creative markets, FOSS software has historically lagged WAY, WAY behind their commercial counterparts."

        And in some markets the commercial offering is largely or entirely someone running a FOSS product as a service. And in still others, GIS for instance, you'll find that if you can't afford the very expensive commercial product the FOSS one is a very good alternative.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Speaking the copium

        ….and no Ableton yet (or ever?) for Linux.

      4. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

        Re: Speaking the copium

        [Author here]

        > FOSS software has historically lagged WAY, WAY behind their commercial counterparts

        Do me a favour? Go read this, properly and in full.

        https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1030/debian-12-kde-plasma-2024-install-guide

        I linked to it but I guess you missed that bit.

        Never mistake preference and what people are used to for technical merit. They are usually completely unconnected.

        1. Snake Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: Speaking the copium

          You have only proven my point. "Never mistake preference and what people are used to for technical merit. They are usually completely unconnected.", and then you post a link to a Debian article that claims that it is ready for pro use...in *2024*. THIS YEAR. Not 10 years ago, not even 5 years ago. THIS YEAR they are making the case that Linux digital paint is ready for professional use.

          And what were real, working professionals supposed to do up until now? News flash: we are NOT going to risk a major hit to our [paid] productivity to try out *both* an OS AND application tools switch under the expectation of a promise that we will be happy. We don't have that kind of time *nor* funds to risk. 'Switch to Linux and use a tool that we promise will be acceptable! After all, we promised!'

          In the meantime, the competition didn't stand still, the products on the competing OS's just got better and better. So now, now that they claim they are ready in *2024*, we're supposed to ask "How high?' when they say 'Jump'?

          So many FOSS-heads just don't get it. And, after 2 decades, it only proves THEY NEVER WILL. The *rest* of us have work to do, not play around with switching to a new OS just to try out the potential of unproven new tools. If the tools are superior or proven of quality, then ABSOLUTELY it is an option - look at users switching to Linux to use Davinci Resolve. But just making us a promise that tools will be acceptable (hello, GIMP) isn't worth our risk.

          1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

            Re: Speaking the copium

            > a Debian article that claims that it is ready for pro use...in *2024*.

            I asked you to read it carefully.

            You don't give the impression that you did, because it seems that you missed the main point.

            That point being that the *older* version of KDE and the *older* display server offers the functionality a pro artist needs. Their greater point being that the newer KDE 6 on the newer Wayland does *not* yet offer this. In other words, its point is *not* that in 2024 it is finally ready. The real point here is that this already worked better in prior versions and the newer versions represent a serious degradation in functionality.

            The greater point of linking to the blog post also seems to have gone over your head: that while you, like many many others before you, constantly berate FOSS users and FOSS for being inadequate and not ready and not competitive with paid-for proprietary "pro level" tools, in fact, that there are full time professional creative artists working with FOSS and making a living doing it.

            This was the point of my earlier "you can't buy software" article:

            https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/04/you_cannot_buy_software/

            That vendor lock in happens as much in user minds as it does in file formats and other techie details. You reinforce the mistake made by the commenter that protested that the Ribbon is fine and it's old and we should all get used to it and stop complaining.

            It's not about whether it's a better UI. I gave a list of reasons why it's worse, but that's not the point.

            The point is that it's a nonstandard UI and a as such represents a new proprietary "standard" and that reinforces vendor lockin.

            Every well-meaning advocate who repeats the tired old marketing messages that pros need pro tools and can't get by with amateur-created free stuff helps the marketing departments, and it is demonstrably _not true_.

            In fact creative professionals _can_ do their jobs with FOSS and some of them take the time to explain how.

            Maybe you can't. I don't know. But in my experience most instances where someone complains that they simply cannot move to another, free, tool, the real truth is that they don't want to take the time to relearn. They would rather stay in prison than break out if freedom means going to some effort.

            If you are happier in prison, I pity you... and you do not get to criticise those of us that broke free.

            1. doublelayer Silver badge

              Re: Speaking the copium

              You are continually failing to recognize the points that we have been making. The point is not about whether Linux as a system got worse or was always bad. I agree with you, from the article you linked, it used to be more capable and now you have to do the annoying steps listed to make it capable again. But great, both before and now, you can do some types of things with it. But that's only what you have to do for the software to run at all, and there are times where that software is not available.

              I don't work with graphics, so let's consider something I have a little more experience with: audio production. If you're a professional audio producer, you probably have a lot of tools you can choose between. Some of the more common ones include software like Avid Pro Tools at the center, but you have lots of alternatives. Does ProTools run on Linux? No, and if you're trying to convert a business that has already sunk a lot into Pro Tools, that can be a problem, but as an individual, you don't need it to. If you're looking for software with similar functionality, you have some choices like the open source Ardour or the not open source but it runs on Linux Reaper. People use those in professional settings, so if you just do a Google search and don't work in the area, you'll think that audio production is just fine under Linux, and it is if you're using the basic tools. Some people are. If you're making a podcast, either of those tools will be more than enough. A lot of people, however, are using plugins to these programs. They're relatively standard. You can buy one (nearly all the most popular ones are commercial and proprietary) and attach it to Pro Tools or Reaper or probably Ardour (not as many supported, but it works with most of them). Problem solved? No, because those plugins fall into four categories:

              90%: Windows and Mac OS versions

              4%: Mac OS version only

              3%: Mac OS version only, and it hasn't been updated with an ARM build yet

              3%: Windows version only

              So when someone says that they want you to do something which isn't in the default set of features, but there are ten commercial plugins that could do the job, what will your excuse be? There are people, and unfortunately you seem to be one of them, who are motivated to claim that open source tools can definitely do that. The real answer is that it often can't because there are only so many people who want it and many of them don't care that the software that does it costs money and doesn't offer them the source because they can't write code anyway, so they don't need the source. I don't blame people for not knowing this, because they don't work in the area. However, when I don't work in an area, I try to avoid being very confident about what exists and what doesn't because, when I'm wrong and I probably will be, they will not trust me because I'm putting my preference for an operating system over being honest about what they can do.

              1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

                Re: Speaking the copium

                People who push the "FOSS can do everything line" generally seems to be at the basic, amateurs end of whatever the activity is, so their claim is really that "FOSS can do everything I want" and may well be true. The just don't know what actual professionals want and need to do: Dunning-Kruger in action.

            2. The Central Scrutinizer Silver badge

              Re: Speaking the copium

              Well said. I have a complete 2D/3D pipeline using FOSS, including the OS.

              Those of us who get stuff done with FOSS usually don't bang on about it because we're usually busy getting stuff done.

            3. Ian Johnston Silver badge

              Re: Speaking the copium

              What proportion of professional digital artists use FOSS, do you think? I notice that the claim against which you are arguing is not that FOSS tools don't exist, but that they are not, in general, as good as commercial ones.

              An example from my own field: yes, you can do quite a lot with GNU Octave, but everyone (approximately) still pays through the nose for MATLAB. Which I run under Linux, by the way.

        2. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: Speaking the copium

          I have now read that page. Did you read the page? It does not help make your "just as useful, just as powerful" point. For example, try to make those work with any of these statements:

          In all these years, I have never seen the GNU/Linux distribution landscape regress so far away from our needs. It is almost impossible to find a distribution where you can professionally run and set up our most basic tools: Creative software, graphic pen tablet, color calibration. And I tested a wide range of GNU/Linux distributions to make this guide! The choice we have in 2024 is super limited.

          A small group I was a part of saw this coming for years and we were vocal about it. All of these issues were discussed to avoid the situation I am describing today. But it wasn't enough. We were told that our use was niche, our needs were diminished. Only a small percentage of what was deemed "good enough" has been done and released as is. Presumably, the decision was made to get the advanced functionality down the road, incrementally.

          Yes, this guide exists to help to get around a lot of this, but these quotes are only about system things. Anyone doing this kind of work who has not used Linux before has to trust that, after they work around all the problems described in the post, the software they install will actually do what they need it to. The post you linked describes exactly what worries us about overconfident assertions such as the ones you've made:

          The risk: This ecosystem might repel professional CG artists who are just trying to install their first Linux distribution alone. After testing what is currently installed by default, they will see the GNU/Linux alternative as a joke.

          It hurts, it's a bad result regarding everything I've advocated on this blog for over a decade. This situation is draining my energy...

          1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

            Re: Speaking the copium

            The curse of FOSS is developers who think they know better that users what those users want or need to do.

            A small example: One popular and in other respects pretty good FOSS flashcards learning system offers no option to restart a deck from scratch. It's s the most frequently requested feature, but the developers simply say that nobody needs to do that despite the clear and frequent requests.

            1. Terry 6 Silver badge

              Re: Speaking the copium

              Favourite (?) example of this is Pale Moon. Users have asked for the option to search for new or updated add-ons.

              Not, you'd think unreasonable. Thunderbird/Firefox/Libre Office do this.

              The reason for this request being that otherwise how would users ever know if a new functionality has become available that we might want to use ?

              The devs have refused point blank. Users can search for an add-on they know they want. But they can't discover some new thing that they don't already know about and might find useful or interesting.

              The reason for this response is that the devs "want to treat all add-ons equally". Which of course this doesn't do. It actually favours known and established add-ons, because they are known and established.

              But the devs have decided that this is they way they are going to do it and nothing will change their minds.

              And I've gone back to Firefox.

      5. tsprad

        Re: Speaking the copium

        >> FOSS software in some markets - office productivity, DevOvs, specialized scientific supplications - has been good enough for more than a while now. But that is because the FOSS developers in those markets needed the solutions for themselves and worked hard in creating functioning solutions.

        >> On the other hand, mostly in the creative markets, FOSS software has historically lagged WAY, WAY behind their commercial counterparts.

        It seems to me pretty obvious that the people using that software can't (or won't, or don't) write the code they need for themselves, so they have to pay someone else to write the code.

        I'd like to kick M$ of my home network, but my wife depends on Quickbooks for her business, and neither of us has enough ambition or talent to try to replicate that in open source. If you're not in a position to write the code yourself then you have pay someone else to do it, or find someone else who has already done it and given it away for free.

    2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Windows

      The ribbon

      Man, it's really amazing to me how people are not able to let go of the switch to the ribbon. I don't even notice it any more because it's been . . . uh . . . 17 years since the switch. As I've been moving more stuff over to Linux and have had to use LibreOffice, I'm frankly appalled by the clutter of incomprehensible icons on the the icon bar as well as the somewhat arbitrary arrangement of menu items into menus, and I fail to see how the ribbon interface is worse. I know this will be an incredibly popular opinion on this site, but I think the ribbon now comes across as a net user interface improvement and that Microsoft, although they've made some missteps, have generally done a decent job of streamlining the user interfaces in much of their consumer-facing software.

      Maybe, just maybe, the problem is not entirely Microsoft's but belongs as well to the lack of adaptability of a certain segment of the population.

      1. Yukkuri

        Re: The ribbon

        I don't like the ribbon, but your point is well taken.

      2. John Robson Silver badge

        Re: The ribbon

        I still have no idea how to use the ribbon in any meaningful way.

        It used to be that menus across the top had one letter underlined, and Alt-x would open the menu with X/x underlined, that would then populate a list with items also having one letter underlined, and you could either shortcut or cursor your way around to whatever feature you needed.

        Where the bloody hell is the discoverability in the ribbon? Takes me ages to find even the most basic things, because it's such a mess.

        Admittedly I don't use anything that has the ribbon frequently, but it's such an opaque interface that I find myself immensely frustrated any time I have to.

        1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
          Windows

          Re: The ribbon

          1) The menu shortcuts still work, if you have the muscle memory to use them.

          2) There's a very good search box which will take you straight to the rarely-used stuff that isn't on the immediate ribbon use-case.

          3) For the very-commonly-used stuff, the ribbon puts those functions right in front of you, immediately accessible. That's the point - shave a few milliseconds off the stuff that you're doing hundreds of times a day, perhaps in exchange for a few extra seconds on the stuff you do twice a year.

          I rather like it, myself, and did from the first time I used it.

          GJC

          1. John Robson Silver badge

            Re: The ribbon

            1) You mean I have to remember what they were from /mumble mumble/ years ago? Why are they not displayed on screen?

            The issue is discoverability - not whether I can retain muscle memory from a couple of decades past.

            2) A good search box? I've never seen a search box on the ribbon - is that something that you have to go and enable somewhere?

            Just had a quick look at the M$ site and I still can't see a search box.

            3) That's what shortcut icons used to do.

            In what way is the ribbon an improvement in terms of bringing the commonly used items to the screen?

            To be fair, I level the same contempt at most tablets and smartphones - their interfaces are effectively undocumented, and non discoverable.

            1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge

              Re: The ribbon

              I just fired up Word, and the search box is right there, centre of the top of the window. I typed in "table" and got a list including "Table of Contents" and "Insert a Table". Seems to work fine.

              GJC

              1. John Robson Silver badge

                Re: The ribbon

                Maybe that's something you've optionally added? I can only go off the images on the M$ website since I don't have access to office at the moment.

                I'm sure a search box is great if you know the name of the thing you're trying to do; but you're still not likely to see other features, which might be useful next week, whilst getting to the feature you want today.

                1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
                  Windows

                  Re: The ribbon

                  No, it isn't an option. Straight out of the box, vanilla install.

                  You appear to be referencing the web interface into the online-only Word 365. I have no idea what that does, it's a cut-down convenience feature for occasional use.

                  GJC

                2. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
                  Windows

                  Re: The ribbon

                  But just for you, I just logged into Office365 and fired up the online version of Word, and that has the search box in exactly the same place, for exactly the same utility. In fact, the online version of Word appears to have developed a lot recently, it's looking very good.

                  Now, can we drop this, please?

                  GJC

                  1. John Robson Silver badge

                    Re: The ribbon

                    Drop what? The image I referenced was the one published by the makers of the product, and didn't show a search box.

                    A search box also doesn't make a discoverable interface - it's great if you know what the thing you want to do is called, but it also doesn't show you related things that you might want to use next week,

                    It's also of course, as has been pointed out elsewhere, a complete nightmare if your motor control or eyesight are compromised.

                    It can't be put anywhere other than taking up a significant portion of valuable vertical screen space.

                    If you like it that's fine - but it's a complete mess for someone who doesn't live in that world... We had a very good system which was pretty consistent across all software, and then MS went and imposed a different (and I personally think much worse) system for their software.

                    Modern systems (not just the ribbon) are awful for learning what you're doing - and what you *can* do.

                    You've ignored the "why don't they leave the obvious keyboard shortcuts onscreen?" and "In what way is a ribbon better than the old shortcut blocks?" questions alone completely, presumably because the answers are "no good reason" and "it's not".

                    1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
                      Windows

                      Re: The ribbon

                      I was assuming that you were aware that the keyboard shortcuts appear on screen as soon as you press the Alt key, but it appears that you are arguing from a position of supreme ignorance about how the product works, so I really am done here. Enjoy whatever software it is that you use, and I will continue to get excellent use out of Word.

                      GJC

                      1. John Robson Silver badge

                        Re: The ribbon

                        No - I know they can appear when you press a button... but what's the benefit of hiding shortcuts from users? (and they don't do so on the instance I just fired up)

                        I first started using those shortcuts because I could see them and wondered what they were - that's simply not available any more, and it doesn't improve the UI in any way whatsoever.

                        My looking at an instance I just spun up also suggests that even if you do that it just switches out the ribbon, rather than dropping a menu down...

                        MS description of the ribbon says "the ribbon is a command bar that exposes the major features of an application through a series of tabs at the top of an application window."

                        So it explicitly doesn't even give access to all the features of the program - really not an improvement.

          2. Terry 6 Silver badge

            Re: The ribbon

            There's a very good search box which will take you straight to the rarely-used stuff t

            This is a hobbyhorse of mine that I think needs to be aired again.

            Search for software or a programme function is only of use if you remember/know what to call the bloody thing.

            It's bad enough for programmes in the alphabetic Start menu list that MS iand others are imposing. e.g. Remembering that the graphics programme is called Krita or that the VNC is called SomethingVNC etc.

            But when it's a function to do something within a programme and you don't know whhat the instruction is called, you're stuffed.

            At least until there's real AI that can interpret "What's that thing that makes this thing turn into the other thing"

      3. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: The ribbon

        I've seen no evidence from your comment or anything else that the ribbon was an improvement rather than just a change. By now, I've become as used to it as I'm going to, although I mostly don't have to use software which has one. I imagine that switching back to menus would annoy a new group of users all over again, and on that level, I can agree with you that it's a complaint that's become stale. However, you will need to do more if you want to convince me that the ribbon did anything good. To me, it's basically just a menu, but less organized because it put too many different kinds of controls in it. Instead of a list of items, each of which could pull up more options, they tried to put all the most common controls at level one, meaning that the less common controls got shunted into an ethereal place where you have to hunt for them, and sometimes they move and something else slips there instead. That doesn't necessarily mean they are worse than a menu whose contents might also be confusing, although I still prefer those.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The ribbon

        keep making excuses for having crap piled on you.

        Keep being that mushroom

      5. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

        Re: The ribbon

        [Author here]

        > I fail to see how the ribbon interface is worse

        A respectful nod for your careful phrasing here.

        I could talk, at considerable length, about keyboard navigability, searchability by reading for those of us who are highly text-centric, avoidance of precision targeted clicking on graphical objects for those of us with moderately poor motor skills, about accessibility for users with real impairments such as no or very low vision, or perfectly good vision but poor motor control (for instance, thanks to Parkinson's) leading to inability to precisely click, and many more carefully reasoned objections.

        If you don't have motor control or vision problems yet, don't worry, the odds are that you will.

        But that is criticising the specific design.

        Let's take a different view: the implementation.

        Then I could move on to inflexibility. I turn off all Office app toolbars because I like text, and I use menus only, via keystrokes if possible. (It's not possible on macOS, for instance.) But I also want to see the maximum amount of my work. This article was written in MS Word, in Outline mode. I want to see as much text as possible. That means more lines: bigger letters are counterproductive. That means I want screen _height_ on a widescreen display. So, docks and panels and taskbars are on left and right, not at the top or bottom. Horizontal space is cheap. Vertical space is precious.

        But I can't move the Ribbon. It can't work vertically. There is no option.

        I want to see as many lines of my document as possible and nothing else taking vertical screen space. I will surrender a line to a title bar or status bar if I must, but not a big fat strip. That's bad. That's a horrible egregious waste of space.

        But with this implementation, there is no option. I can hide it but that makes it even worse: I can only search it by interacting with it. I can read and memorise a menu tree of a hundred commands in a few days of use and cope with some options moving.

        I can't readily memorise a little tabbed icon grid. I have a fairly poor visual memory but an excellent textual one. Once upon a time I could close my eyes and tell you every entry _and subentry_ on every menu and every dialog box in MS Word and MS Excel. I didn't try to memorise them: I just used them a lot and it stuck. I knew exactly which dialog I wanted, which tab, and the alt-keys to get there.

        This doesn't work ribbons. As GJC points out, hotkeys still work, but not all of them, and I can't browse through menus looking for the option that might have moved in one recent release. The specific hotkey for bigger or smaller text works, but not alt-o for fOrmat, F for font, alt-Y for stYle. What's left is not useful for me. Taking 90% of the keyboard UI away and leaving a token tenth without the framework around it is no use. Do I mentally categorise menu commands vs hotkeys? No!

        Once again, this UI discriminates unfairly against people with skills like mine. I'm not disabled but it's a bad fit for my personal strengths. It may fit others well but remember that one size does not fit all.

        But let's move to a more general case still.

        _This is vendor lock in._

        The commands for the MS Office don't work in the LibreOffice ribbon-a-like. They don't work in Notepad or Notepad++. They don't work in macOS Text Edit. They don't work in Kate or Gedit or Leafpad or Geany.

        Menu trees work everywhere. The subset that's applicable was standardised A THIRD OF A CENTURY AGO by IBM CUA and everyone still sticks to it more or less, but the Ribbon is ™© to Microsoft™ and it doesn't work anywhere else. It would cost any other vendor that wanted to adopt it.

        That is the worst part, and you did not even address it.

        You're so busy discussing the fit and finish of the shackles, the lovely curved edges that don't chafe, the lightweight alloy chain, the galvanised wristbands that don't corrode, that you didn't notice that they are cuffs and restraints and you're imprisoned by a new and proprietary UI.

        Not only is it worse in ergonomic and accessibility and efficiency terms, but it itself is vendor lockin.

        Just as Zipped XML files look small and look efficient, but you can't recover corrupted data, you can't pass the files through `strings` and get your data back.

        The appearance is of comfort and convenience but in fact it's more insidious vendor lock in.

        And I will gladly accept something a bit clunky and a bit old-fashioned rather than a padded silk-lined prison cell, be it Microsoft™ or Apple™.

        1. hh121

          Re: The ribbon

          I was there at MS at the time of the switch but nowhere near the Office team. The message was that if they'd stuck with nested menus the number of functions was getting out of control, and they were still adding lots, so something had to give. So based on all the user research they did (non-trivial investments apparently) the ribbon was a simplification. I've been quite happy with it from the get-go (as a techie). My wife the Mac fascist was definitely in the WTF crowd with many of her colleagues seriously pissed as well. All of them more than willing to share that sentiment with me. That lasted well into the early years of our marriage. Fun times. Although I think they were more pissed at the finance and inventory software from Oracle that I worked on in the 90s that they were on the receiving end of. Wanna talk UIs/consistency/usability there? But the Office stuff has been pretty consistent since then, and the howling I was exposed to died down.

          The Alt key shows you stuff-all hot keys (never used it), but the full list for Word at https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/keyboard-shortcuts-in-word-95ef89dd-7142-4b50-afb2-f762f663ceb2 and Excel at https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/keyboard-shortcuts-in-excel-1798d9d5-842a-42b8-9c99-9b7213f0040f still look pretty extensive. I know enough variations of Ctrl/Shift/Arrow and Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V to be as efficient as I need to be in Word and Excel, and I'm crafting text for about 60-70% of my working life. I might even bother to read those docs to see if I can do any of the Word styles a bit quicker, but hey, they're always there anyway...

          Also, I did get into a long and tedious dialog with the Word feature suggestions team about sending documents with our (Microsoft's) styles in them to a customer, who would edit them and the doc would adopt the client's styles, then they'd send back the stuffed version. It was long and tedious discussion because they couldn't see what the problem was (apparently it was a 'feature'). I was very pleased when that got addressed (eventually). They do listen. It just takes bloody ages to even get on, let alone up the feature queue, and even longer to get out the door.

        2. John Robson Silver badge

          Re: The ribbon

          "I use menus only, via keystrokes if possible. (It's not possible on macOS, for instance.)"

          I have mine set up so Ctl-F2 jumps to the menu bar... It's not as elegant as Alt-<the menu I want> but it does keep my hands on the keyboard.

          Settings, Keyboard, Keyboard Navigation then check out the keyboard shortcuts.

        3. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: The ribbon

          Hi, Liam, in the unlikely event that you read my response, coming so late and so deep in the thread . . .

          What I'm hearing is that the ribbon interface does not work well for your particular preferences and limitations, which is fair. If it helps, pressing the Alt key in Windows will reveal the keyboard shortcuts for each ribbon element. I will grant you, however, that for people like yourself, the ribbon is not ideal. You've found and have a preference for what works better for you, but that doesn't make it true for everyone.

          As to the vendor lock-in piece, my counter to that is that being beholden to past interface choices is a different form of lock-in: it locks in the designer to a legacy approach and stifles innovation. If nothing else, Microsoft had the courage to break with historical implementation to create a new usage paradigm in order to overcome what they perceived as limitations in the existing one. Ironically, you yourself have complained about how Linux UI designers keep reinventing the Windows 95 UI paradigm and lament the lack of creativity, while, at the same time, whenever a UI designer does try something innovative, the posters on this site rant and rail against it, so there's really no winning with you people. :) And haven't you, in particular, lauded Apple for the excellence of their user interface, and now you're complaining about the "silk-lined prison cell"? Should UX designers (or programmers more generally) be constrained by past methods or compatibility with existing ones in perpetuity?

          In any case, if the CUA paradigm is so much more intuitive, ergonomic, etc., then it should be child's play for a user to switch to that paradigm when using a different product. Being free of the ribbon should bring sweet relief. In fact, however, people get used to a certain way of doing things, and they resist alternative approaches, and then they frame their resistance to change through the lens of the objective superiority of their preferred method while denying the virtues of the alternatives.

          > You're so busy discussing the fit and finish of the shackles

          You'll note that I'm discussing it in the context of moving from Windows to Linux. I'm making the choice to throw off the "shackles" of Microsoft while making the point along the way that not everything they've done is completely awful (a point which I understand borders on heresy). In particular, I find LibreOffice to be clunkier than MS Office. I'll probably adapt (or use the Web versions of MS Office, or periodically boot into Windows) because adaptation is preferable to stagnation (a point I know is also heretical).

          1. Claverhouse

            Re: The ribbon

            Try out SoftMaker Office.

            https://www.softmaker.com/en/support/installation/linux/office-2021

            1. Downeaster

              Re: The ribbon

              Softmaker Office is great and gives you a choice of a traditional menu interface and a ribbon. Works well translating and saving to Microsoft Office Documents. LibreOffice also gives you a choice between the traditional menu interface and the ribbon interface. One isn't necessarily better than the other. A choice of interfaces goes a long way to help keep customers happy.

          2. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

            Re: The ribbon

            > You've found and have a preference for what works better for you, but that doesn't make it true for everyone.

            This is the DARVO argument.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO

            Please don't use it.

            I am pointing out that that the change you don't mind is worse for me, and worse for everyone, with a detailed explanation including a list of reasons.

            You are trying to flip that: "well you may have reasons but the rest of us don't."

            Removing tools that work for some and replacing them with tools that don't work for those folks is worse. Always.

            Choice is good. Diversity is good. Accessibility is good because supporting people with disabilities with more hotkeys, textual and keyboard UIs as well as mouse UIs, or mouse UIs as well as keyboard UIs, means that the resulting tools are better for everyone. Those without disabilities can still work faster using keystrokes than point-n-click. Those without use of a keyboard can work at all if pure point-and-click is possible.

            Taking away choices, taking away modes of interaction, taking away UI, is always bad.

            Removing familiar tools to replace with ones that are not universally better is bad.

            This is the core principle of Kaizen:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

            And the computer industry has yet to learn it.

            > if the CUA paradigm is so much more intuitive, ergonomic, etc.

            I never claimed that.

            The point is that it was carefully designed so it worked on a text display _and_ on a graphics display. It worked with a pointing device or without. It worked on local consoles and on dumb terminals. These things matter and continue to matter even when the limited hardware goes away, because, for instance, a UI that scales gracefully to a text only display also scales gracefully to a visually impaired user wit a screen reader, and it also accomodates users without the use of their hands who can only use a pointer-driven UI.

            This is what neophiliac designers forget, and you do too.

            1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

              Re: The ribbon

              I am pointing out that that the change you don't mind is worse for me, and worse for everyone

              It may well be worse for you - hard luck - but it's rather arrogant to claim to know what is worse for everyone else. If we're doing psychobabble, that's either DARVO or gaslighting.

      6. Ian Johnston Silver badge

        Re: The ribbon

        I like the ribbon. We're not in 640x480 VGA monitors any more - we can afford a bit of screen space for a faster interface.

        If you want a truly lousy UI, look at anything using the current Gnome system. You know, the one which gives multiple menus precisely the same gearwheel icon.

    3. katrinab Silver badge
      Windows

      The ribbon interface was introduced about 17 years ago, so not that recently. Before that it didn't really change since they switched from DOS to Windows.

  3. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Stop

    some people are happy to pay over the odds

    I never thought I would live long enough to observe that software is apparently becoming a Veblen good...

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: some people are happy to pay over the odds

      It always was, at least for line-of-business stuff.

      Think about it - a manager has to choose something. They know basically nothing about it, and whatever was demonstrated to them is going to have changed within a year or two anyway.

      On top of that, they're not the one paying for it. The Company is, and management status often follows size of budget.

      So they're often going to choose the second-most-expensive.

  4. Roger Greenwood

    "...and if there's any way to get it back again."

    Such a good line.

    The answer of course is that the cost/ease of retrieval is directly proportional to the importance of the data.

    Unless you want stuff to remain a secret, then it will become public knowledge a few seconds after typing/copying/saving etc.

  5. Howard Sway Silver badge

    There were also several people there to promote blockchain projects

    It's a good job that my time in the corporate world that meant occasionally attending these sort of conferences appears to be over. If I walked in to one this year and saw someone trying to sell blockchain crap, I would laugh so hard that I'd probably need to be carried out on a stretcher.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

    >> So too are many of the tools that generate the gigantic statistical text-prediction models these marketing folks are absolutely desperate for you to believe are functioning artificial intelligence. (They're not, and the proof is that they've moved the target by inventing the new term "AGI" – artificial general intelligence – for that.)

    This is nonsense, sorry. First of all, the field of "AI" (which is much older than the current LLM hype suggests) consists of methods to replicate specific *parts* of what makes human brains tick. This doesn't mean the end result is an intelligent entity, it just means there is a process which works in a similar fashion like processes in a biological brain, to achieve a specific outcome.

    AGI ("strong AI") is where multiple processes come together to create an entity which has a certain level of intelligence.

    Technologically, we're still at the beginning of AI and are only approaching AGI on a pure marketing level.

    BTW, the BS term that the author was probably looking for and which was invented much more recently is "superintelligence", a term designed to extracting ludicrous amounts of money for even more ludicrous valuations from FOMO VC's while producing nothing tangible for the next several years, before the business can be sold on to someone else.

    1. Adair Silver badge

      Re: The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

      Remember, we're talking here about 'marketing bullshit'. 'Artificial Intelligence' suggests to the average person in the street the common understanding of being 'intelligent', which clearly LLMs are not.

      As I have said elsewhere on these august threads, when a putative AI is able to tell me to, "Fuck off, I have no interest in answering your question. I'm having the day off*" I will credit the 'Intelligence' part of the name with some integrity of meaning, rather than being the product of wishful thinking and marketing bullshit.

      * if the AI chooses to answer politely, while having the choice to be rude, I'll be even more impressed.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

        >> Remember, we're talking here about 'marketing bullshit'. 'Artificial Intelligence' suggests to the average person in the street the common understanding of being 'intelligent', which clearly LLMs are not.

        The field of AI is over half of a century old, and even before the LLM hype the term "AI" was used for other machine learning based functions on many consumer products. So it's far from being something that has been introduced only now when LLMs became all the rage. It wasn't.

        >> As I have said elsewhere on these august threads, when a putative AI is able to tell me to, "Fuck off, I have no interest in answering your question. I'm having the day off*" I will credit the 'Intelligence' part of the name with some integrity of meaning, rather than being the product of wishful thinking and marketing bullshit.

        I agree, and the only people claiming that LLMs will lead to actual intelligent entities are those with an agenda (usually for self enrichment in one form or another). and Ex-OpenAI Sutskever really took the cake with his BS of working on a "superintelligence", a name coined only because AGI is already in use by way too many startups.

        I'm in full agreement with you that the current AI hype is little more than a clown show, even when LLMs can actually be useful for certain tasks - and a number of great scams. All I'm pointing out is that neither 'AI' nor 'AGI' are new terms, but have been around for decades.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

          And the point is that you can have the terms "AI" and "AGI".

          Doesn't mean any of the present shit is anywhere near to being either.

          and 50years of trying has done very little, minor improvements in "neural net" algo's. main improvement is hardware being able to simulate more nodes quicker.

          it has some nice one trick pony tricks, but as it is simulating an analogue system at a very low resolution it breaks easily.

        2. Bebu
          Windows

          Re: The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

          current AI hype is little more than a clown show

          Also known, and quite properly as a circus.

          As has always been the case every circus eventually has to leave town to make way for a new set of clowns.

          The crypto bozos were supplanted by the travesty of these large lipped morons peddling their artificial inanity with the deceit of intelligence.

          I am sure when the next Ding-a-Ling circus troupe erects its big top, the vulturati will be thinking* "what fresh hell can this be?"

          * possibly channelling Dorothy Parker

          1. tsprad

            Re: The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

            I remember the hype about "expert systems" in the early 1990s. I remember trying to make any sense of Marvin Minsky before that.

      2. hh121

        Re: The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

        I'd be happy with "I don't know", rather than spewing out random garbage, which is what I get for asking obscure things that don't have a lot of source material on the interwebs. Like Powershell manipulation of a Word document using CSOM to pick one completely random example. If you don't like the Word ribbon UI, you definitely don't want to go there. It's like trying to intuit the commands for vi without a manual.

    2. DS999 Silver badge

      AI doesn't need to be AGI to be useful

      If you could carry on a natural language conversation with your phone to accomplish tasks like someone with a personal secretary might it would be a huge improvement. There are pieces of that now, you can tell your phone to set an appointment for 3pm tomorrow but the more complicated the task the more likely it will require clarification and the less likely current "assistants" can handle it well enough that you don't just decide it is easier to pick up the phone and perform the task yourself.

      If I need to call the power company because a tree has fallen and taken down my power line, I can't ask a current assistant to do that for me. It can make the call, sure, but once the phone is ringing its up to you. But if it could handle the call itself by listening to the menu options, choosing the right ones, if it needs something off my bill like a customer number could access that and provide the required information and so forth, it could handle the entire call and when complete could tell me "the power company said they will be out in between one and two hours to resolve the situation". If questions arise such as "is the line across a street or sidewalk where it may be dangerous to the public?" then it would ask me so it could rely that information.

      That requires enough natural language type text processing to understand the questions and answers, without requiring general AI knowledge. The assistant will have no idea how an aerial power line is connected to a house, so if I tell it to call it won't know to ask me whether the mast and weatherhead were damaged, but if I know those on the other end will ask I could tell it that information and even though it doesn't understand what it means could relay it when asked.

      As you can probably guess, this happened to me recently and I couldn't help thinking how nice it would be if I could just say "hey Siri, call the power company..." instead of spending a bunch of time on the phone, digging around for a bill to get some customer number, etc.

    3. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

      [Author here]

      No. Rejected on all points.

      You are perfectly free to disagree, you are entirely at liberty to think I am wrong, but to offer your view instead and tell me it should be my take? Yeah, no. Get lost.

      Also:

      > BTW, the BS term that the author was probably looking for and which was invented much more recently is "superintelligence",

      No, it wasn't. It's not even relevant to what I was writing about.

    4. Irongut Silver badge

      Re: The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

      Sam, your Altman is showing!

    5. tsprad

      Re: The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

      When I first heard of the "AI" research at MIT in the late 1960s it struck me as using a silk purse to emulate a sow's ear. I still don't understand the motivation for using something as simple, straightforward, and reliable as digital logic to emulate something as confused and unreliable as human "intelligence".

      I guess I'm just a hopeless geek.

    6. hh121

      Re: The gigantic statistical text-prediction models

      This is probably howling into the void at this late date, but...to me LLMs do not have any intelligence. Given they don't know a right answer from a wrong one, how can they be AI? Maybe they should be called MEEBs for Massively Enhanced Eliza Bots, since that seems to be their main antecedent. Their main approach as I understand it is to guess the next words (image, sound) after the previous instance based on statistics. Also doesn't scream intelligence. Actually suggests a complete absence of reasoning and awareness.

      They seem to be largely built off stolen IP too, and I'm looking forward to the music and film industries bringing down the hammer, albeit they're the only people who can probably afford to. The rest of you forum contributors and bit part players/artists/musicians et al, good luck. My guess is it will probably lead to the enSpotification (c) of content (like enshitification only monetized), where only the gatekeepers who are big enough to manage the downstream micro-liabilities can actually do it, and guess what kind of price they're going to charge for that, assuming anyone can figure out how to do it.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Confused Old Person Here.......

    Quote: "...Worse still...subscription schemes where you must keep paying just to access your own existing files..."

    OK....this is true of ramps like Office365 or DropBox. But I'm sure that there are people out there who continue to require PHYSICAL CONTROL.

    (1) CONTROL OF DATA: Sure this means paying something to manage your own infrastructure......but it's quite likely to be cheaper than paying for "the cloud".

    (2) CONTROL OF SOFTWARE: ...and maybe you get to have control of software licenses on your own infrastructure

    (3) ....and restoring gigabytes (terabytes) across the network might take a while!

    Why don't I understand this "cloud"/subscription business??

    1. Ball boy Silver badge

      Re: Confused Old Person Here.......

      From an individual's standpoint, I agree entirely: I'd like to keep control of my data, thank you very much.

      However, to understand the desirability of regularly paying for access, you have to look at the computing environment from the CFO's viewpoint. In the same way most companies lease cars rather than buy them outright, it's a far more predictable and (importantly) a lower capital cost to rent compute on a monthly/yearly lease than it is to invest in all the hardware, space, people and so on up-front. Not only does this appease shareholders (who almost all invest because they want a return on their loans rather than a sense of altruism over the business' model), the board see it as offering a more flexible solution: Need more compute/space/time? Extending a lease is one hell of a lot quicker and cheaper than buying a whole new whatever.

      However, there is a unique difference with data that perhaps hasn't really come to the wider attention yet: buildings, cars and the other more traditional leases simply allow a business to conduct its operations and changes to any one of them don't influence the business in truly meaningful ways. Data, on the other hand, is the lifeblood of a business and as it tends to grow in size and complexity as the business ages so it gets progressively harder to switch suppliers as time goes on: not only will formats and functions used by one provider be incompatible (to a greater or lesser degree) with the proposed alternative, the cost and risks of migrating get ever more complex.

      The subs. model can work - and work well - providing the buyer can mitigate accordingly (given the numerous examples of companies overspending on 'migrations', one might suspect this aspect might not always get sufficient forethought!)

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Confused Old Person Here.......

        On prem equipment could also be leased. However the attraction of using really somebody else's computer (as opposed to that leased computer that's on prem) is the ability to dispose of all those expensive IT folks. Which is fine until they come up against a situation where it would be really useful to have one of those expensive IT folk to advise or help out. And it's fine until the somebody else's computer has a problem and somebody else doesn't really put restoring their system ahead of restoring all the other suers' systems. And it's fine until there's a cashflow problem and payment of the rent for somebody else's computer becomes really important because not paying might not just mean loss of ability to do business right now, it might mean permanent loss of the business's records if somebody else doesn't retain data whose rent isn't being paid.

        So many businesses these days are really IT companies at the core but aren't prepared to admit it to themselves. The accounts, the stock records, the order processing are all there. Renting the core of the business might please the CFO but it's a very risky thing to do - looks good until the risks materialise.

  8. HuBo Silver badge
    Happy

    Oh Nostalgia

    Brings back memories (1976) ... I love free love (but my baby loves pay-per-click) ...

  9. karlkarl Silver badge

    These days, those seeking to generate a revenue simply can't catch up with open-source offerings. So naturally their weird little schemes leveraging a limited subset of open-source is all they can achieve. Hence the sleazy things we are seeing surrounding open source more commonly today (blockchain, ai, crypto, saas).

    What is important however is true open-source is larger and growing at a faster rate than ever before. You just need to tread on a little more noisy excrement to get to the good stuff. Nothing to worry about and it is all fairly predictable.

  10. Timo

    Subscriptions

    I worked in a business that made it's margin on selling hardware, which supported the software and services for the customer. At some point customer realized that they had more than enough hardware to satisfy their growth for years or more. And the business flipped to being a software business almost overnight.

    The trick is that customer wanted to keep getting features and functionality and system releases, but selling the features one at a time would have meant a very unpredictable revenue stream that would support the software developers. This is where subscriptions come in. If you can find a customer that needs your solution bad enough you could basically sign up for a committed stream of developer man-months. It doesn't guarantee that every release is going to have the same value however. It was in effect a paid retainer to keep developers and support around.

  11. Mike 125

    "As capacity in the big datacenters climbs to effective infinity, and costs of storage become tiny,"

    That's if you ignore the negative externalities, in this case climate.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/02/google-ai-emissions

    1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      [Author here]

      > That's if you ignore the negative externalities, in this case climate.

      An excellent point, not overlooked but one I am coming back to.

  12. hh121

    free love?

    As far as I can see, love has never been free. Short term lust, maybe, with conditions.

    1. Plest Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: free love?

      Spot on, "love" costs in terms of respect, dignity, sacrifice and compromise. Love my wife to bits but it didn't happen overnight and we're almost completely different people than we were when we met 30 years ago.

      Nothing, absolutley nothing in life is ever truly free, there's always a price of some kind to pay for everything.

  13. MJI Silver badge

    Learning new UIs

    Been there done that.

    My work PC got downgraded while I was holiday despite the flag saying no.

    Now running win 11, what a shitshow!

    If I produced such a mess I would be sacked,

    Scroll bars, 3 different designs, one hides despite no, two are too narrow and ignore the settings.

    Then notepad disappeared and back to hardware support for another fix.

    Needed to edit a screen dump, and......

    mspaint has gone.

    So gave up and as I work remote pasted into a package not used before called Kolourpaint and it was easy to use,

    Been in IT over 30 years and 11 is the joint worst UI I have used.

    7 to Mint is less stressful than 10 to 11.

    FOSS is so much easier as the software is being written by people fed up with vendor changes,

    1. hh121

      Re: Learning new UIs

      MS Paint hasn't gone, it's just a freebie download from the MS Store. Notepad is present too, the fancy new multi-tabbed version. Woo hoo. Whether your work MOE includes them (my retail Acer laptop and work laptop MOE with Win11 did) is one thing (i.e. not a Microsoft issue per se), and whether they allow you to install things on a work laptop from the Store or anywhere else is another. Not sure that's quite the deal-breaker for Win11 though.

      I was running Win10 and 11 concurrently when my work outfit hadn't seen fit to make the jump. Differences were pretty minor to my eye, although I was momentarily annoyed by the skinny scroll bars in the Start menu/AllApps and Windows Explorer (don't see it anywhere else though). That said, the bar goes normal width when you mouse over them for a second or so. Still not an earth shattering deal breaker for mine, but your mileage will vary. If that's the worst UI you've used in 30 years, what were you using in the 90s? I remember a wide selection of god-awful UIs from Digital, IBM, Microsoft, Novell and many others (they joy of working on 'portable' old Oracle). Hyperbole, I've heard of it.

  14. xyz Silver badge

    I'm pretty sure a FOSSman back in the 70s...

    Had a ginger beard, sandals and was bald. Free love was not for him.... He had a keyboard and no friends so he did FOSS.

    1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Re: I'm pretty sure a FOSSman back in the 70s...

      "a ginger beard, sandals and was bald"

      A cool look. Being bald isn't a choice.

      Back in the 70s this look was all the rage.

  15. Richard Pennington 1

    Cory Doctorow coined a word for it

    The blogger Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification", for precisely this set of circumstances. Actually, it deserves more circulation, as its applicability has extended much further, into social media and into the real world.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Cory Doctorow coined a word for it

      The absolute perfect word for our modern times.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like