Microsoft Kills Office Anti-Piracy Program 233
CWmike writes "Microsoft last week killed the Office Genuine Advantage anti-piracy service that first checked — and later nagged — whether customers were running legal copies of Office. ZDNet blogger Ed Bott first reported on Microsoft's move after a tipster pointed him toward a support document on the company's site. That Dec. 17 document simply noted that Office Genuine Advantage 'has been retired,' but offered no explanation. A Microsoft spokeswoman told Computerworld on Monday, 'The program has served its purpose and thus we have decided to retire the program.'"
Re:Any bets... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I feel like what has been happening is that individual users who aren't going to be paying money for business software on their personal machine anyway (like myself), were responding to Genuine Advantage by adopting OpenOffice rather than sticking with MS Office.
As individual users move towards OO, small businesses move towards OO. As OO gets more common, more people feel like OO is an acceptable option. You see where I'm going with this.
Seems like it would be better for Microsoft to keep users on MS Office than push them off MS Office altogether.
Re:Any bets... (Score:4, Interesting)
When it comes down to the end user, that's going to be one of the biggest criteria for what platform to adopt--and if it were a choice between google docs and MS Office, most people I know would pick the cheaper and easier option.
Besides, MS doesn't package Office with Windows--but they do package 'the internet'.
Re:Any bets... (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, its funny how these Slashdot articles line up with work.
I just got back from a weeks vacation to learn that we have an upcoming Microsoft Audit here in January. They're going to be viewing our server licenses, office, all that kind of stuff. We're not too concerned since we purchase these things OEM bundled all nice and tidy, but on the odd occaison where a re-install of Windows was necessary and the Office Product key lost, we had this neat version of Office 2003 that didn't need a key to install, imagine that.
On top of that - we actually have about 150 thousand dollars worth of Client Access Licenses in use on our exchange server that aren't paid for, JUST in our disabled accounts (whose email store we haven't removed since the CEO wants to be able to access them at a moments notice, and we just started the process of archiving them a couple months ago).
I have told my boss numerous times that we could have switched to OpenOffice or LibreOffice long ago. Almost no retraining really required, the layout is largely the same. No licensing fees. But he pushes back that what they are paying for is insurance. When something doesn't work between MS Office versions he can blame Microsoft. Perfect deflection. He doesn't want to be the guy who made everyone switch off Microsoft and then be expected to fully support it more than MS Office. Its alright, he has his reasons. I don't blame him. I would take the flak and argue the savings - I've personally had enough trouble just getting MS Office to work properly I couldn't see any of the other products possibly being any worse (Especially since OpenOffice can now be deflected to Oracle, Huzzah!).
I -WISH- my company was a large account that threatened to go somewhere else if Microsoft kept nagging us... My coworkers say that what'll probably happen is that the guy will come in, survey, ask for a dollar amount, the company will write a cheque, and IT won't get Christmas bonuses this year.
Time to look for a new place to work? Yeah it's going through our (the IT Department's) minds quite a bit. Resumes in hand.
Re:How about they kill activation too? (Score:5, Interesting)
OGA/WGA/activation is pointless. It annoys the legit users while the pirates are happily ignoring it.
Exactly. I'm running a legit copy of Sever 2008 R2 and after my latest reinstall (on to a SSD), it wouldn't activate without calling an automated number and following prompts. I tried 3 times to get it to activate through this method but it 'failed' every time. After the 3rd try, I let the automated service send me off to talk with a human rep...except for one problem: the extension the system sent me to was a disconnected number. After having wasted 45 minutes on the "simple and automated" system, I found a WGA crack (or whatever the hell they're calling it now) and have been puttering along for the last several months with no problems at all.
Re:Outlook's icon is a clock (Score:1, Interesting)
Microsoft doesnt push piracy - on Terminal Server (Score:4, Interesting)
Bye Microsoft office, Hello Open Office (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really the goal (Score:4, Interesting)
The goal with MS's stuff has always been to find distributors who are committing fraud. While I'm sure they don't mind stopping individuals doing casual piracy, they realize that'll never happen on a large scale. So the real objective is stores ripping people off.
What you discover is that still around half of all computers sold are done by small shops. May have shrunk some since I last checked stats, but it is a lot. People go to their local computer store and get a PC built. Fine and well. The problem is some of these shops decided to pad their bottom line by handing out pirated software. They don't tell their customers, of course. You think you are getting a legit Windows license and aren't.
So MS started WGA to combat that. Well when WGA tripped, if you called MS, they asked you questions regarding where you got Windows, and then issued you a legit license (had to do this at a client's site). What they were after is who is handing this stuff out. If they get a bunch of information that indicates a given store is doing it, then they can go after them. They apparently had success with this.
Well my guess is that what they've found is that stores are not doing this with Office. They implemented it, hoping to have the same kind of thing happen, but have found that stores are not doing it.
Makes sense. Most people, when the buy Office, buy it as an addon to the system. You pay a specific price for it. However Windows is an assumed part of the price of a computer. So in the case of Windows easy for a small business to decide they want to just not pay and pad their margins (or reduce the price to make it more attractive). Less likely with something sold as a separate addon.
Re:Outlook's icon is a clock (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that people [buy a copy of Microsoft Office just for Outlook] instead of using an e-mail client instead.
Does the e-mail client have an appointment calendar? For example, are Thunderbird users aware of Lightning [mozilla.org], a version of Sunbird packaged as a T-bird extension? There's a reason that Outlook's icon is a clock, and not just because the rim and hands spell "OL". And can it connect to Exchange at work, where IT has disabled standards-based connection protocols for nebulous "security reasons"?
I work in a small office (My own!!). My partner is a thumbfisted computer user, take Excel off his computer and he usually would use it as a lamp. BUT, after I installed Thunderbird+ lightning + shared gmail calendar, he was hooked.
Training time: 0
His happy face when he clicked his way to setting up a shared event: priceless
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Perpetual license fight is coming (Score:4, Interesting)
I expect a huge fight between Microsoft and the corporations over whether or not the original license allows them to use the product on a virtual machine. The compromise is going to be one last payment to Microsoft to regularize the licenses and that would be the last golden egg laid by the MsOffice goose. After that it will be cooked I suppose.