Microsoft broke British and European competition laws, UK reseller tells High Court Microsoft's attempts to kill off resellable perpetual software licences infringe the EU constitution and UK competition law alike, according to the legal filings of a reseller suing Redmond for £270m in London's High Court. Details of ValueLicensing's lawsuit against Microsoft are now in the public domain after the US-based …
So they could get their products £270m cheaper without any silly subscription malware? (subscription somewhat needs an agent running in the background to monitor the "health" of the subscription, plus all that extra telemetry...).
Frankly, I think subscriptions should be illegal - or at least you should own the perpetual license after max 24 instalments. Company should also be required to fix any bugs for up to 6 years after purchase or release the source code so that the customer could get someone to fix it and then charge the company.
If subscriptions were illegal then the company employs programmers to create the software, and once it's sold to the users they tell the programmers to fix the bugs. But who's going to pay the programmers for supporting an application that's generating them zero income?
Subscriptions encourage a company to support the product, the original sale just paid a bonus to the sales dept.
If subscriptions were illegal then the company employs programmers to create the software, and once it's sold to the users they tell the programmers to fix the bugs.But who's going to pay the programmers for supporting an application that's generating them zero income?
If a company sells you a broken unit, for example a leaking bowl, then how are they going to pay their employees to fix it if you already paid for it once? The mystery...
Subscriptions encourage a company to support the product, the original sale just paid a bonus to the sales dept.
No it doesn't. Plenty of companies selling buggy and almost unusable software as subscription and they do nothing to fix problems.
Also how do you explain that the workers' salary does not grow with the number of subscriptions? Another mystery...
It's a pure greed and exploitation of both workers and consumers.
It's too complicated a topic to be exclusively on one side or the other. The bit I find offensive is the use of high cost licenses to keep milking customers without any meaningful innovation in return, which is something that companies trying to hang on to monopolies are prone to do.
You have Microsoft, you have the games from Oracle who is deservedly imfamous for it, and you have the lock in market from Adobe which has been quietly establishing a monopoly position through buying up fonts that Microsoft could have only ever dreamt of, but which hasn't come onto most people's radar yet because it's typically only designers who spot this, especially when they try to buy standalone webfonts (i.e. not via TypeKit, which is basically seems to run the same privacy busting game as Google fonts).
What I am OK with is genuinely useful apps asking for a small annual fee so they can continue development, that's fair because it benefits both parties. I still rather pay outright, but for some I'm happy to pay an annual fee because it helps me too - which is the whole reason to pay a fee in the first place.
Or just go back to "the good old days" where you buy an OS, software, programmes, apps, whatever as you see fit and you "own" it for life. And like with physical products, you get support and a "warranty" for 5 years, ie bug fixes. After that, you are on your own unless you buy the newer, latest version.
"App" developers, both small and large, get constant income from sales, when the new version comes out, the old version stops being sold. It's still a constant income, if not as high as subscription services, because people will pay, I dunno, £10 for an "app", every few years or so rather than "only" £2 per month for as long as they want the app. Likewise, something like MS Office for say £250 rather than "only" £10 per month for life.
"we believe will benefit our customers as they adopt cloud technologies"
That may be what you 'believe', and unfortunately what many will get sucked in too, but I really want the choice. I don't mind paying a one off ownership fee, then a continued support contract, for however long that may last or I can justify. I get to run the software, on my own hardware, even if security updates are no longer available. My choice. Put it all in the cloud under a vague subscription service, where it may fall over tomorrow, or the license terms change beneath my feet? No, not ever.
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