Idiots?

I'm not one of them, but what makes them idiots? Seems kind of uncalled for.

Not sure why they’re idiots, trying to go the non-sub option is smart, doesn’t vote for subs. Microsoft is the asshole here.

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

I'd argue trying to avoid yet another subscription by paying upfront was an honest and good faith strategy. The problem was assuming Microsoft also acts in good faith, and wouldn't just take the money and run like they have just 7 years in.

Honestly for things like this, I would struggle to be convinced that these folks aren't entirely within their right to take back what they already bought in good faith by pirating it.

After all, perpetual means you bought a license to use that program for life, regardless of whether Microsoft wants to uphold that or not.

Disabled or pirated are not the only options:

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/

Victim-blaming is the real stupidity here. Microsoft harasses its customers (again) and now the customers are the idiots?

This is the same type of propaganda Nvidia is trying to push. Jensen Huang saying "people should have planned better, the rising prices of hardware was imminent" is the exact same tactic of being the cause of the problem and still putting the blame of everyone else.

Somewhat loaded headline

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.

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.

Victim blaming is definitely how you win people to your side... Dumbass

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.

classic Micro$lop

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"

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

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.

Spicy headline.

Microsoft constantly punishes any idiot who ever bought anything from them.

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