Bonum Certa Men Certa

Choose OpenDocument Format to Avoid Becoming Enslaved to a Single Program

The children are our future, but what will be the impact of tying them to a company's agenda? Many schools and colleges already do this by outsourcing their E-mail services to Hotmail (Microsoft) and forcing everybody to use and learn Microsoft Office. There should be a better way.

If you wish to help children in the developing world, you can still purchase an OLPC unit, which will in turn give another one to a child. The OLPC also boasts ODF support.

Although the applications currently can communicate only with the same applications running on other OPLC laptops, they are based on open source and open standards (such as ODF for documents) and therefore could work with other standard-compliant applications on other systems in the future.


No child deserves to have his/her own data locked in and become accessible from just a single pricey application.

The Renting Model



Recall this video which was mentioned a few days ago. It is a new commercial that illustrates the effects of one paying as one goes, essentially burning money on software that it not needed.

As a timely example of the dangers ahead consider yesterday's update from Mary Jo Foley.

Via the pay-as-you-go program, users can choose three- or six-month subscriptions to Office Professional 2007 and pay a monthly fee to use the product.


An innocent observer might think that Microsoft has been generous when it offered cheap software (never mind the renting business model), but remind yourself of Microsoft's long-term goals:

"Microsoft's strategy of getting developing nations hooked on its software was clearly outlined by Bill Gates almost a decade ago," said Con Zymaris, CEO of long-standing open source firm Cybersource.

Specifically, Bill Gates, citing China as an example, said:
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."[1]


”There is potential to extract a lot of more money, which no longer depends on the "forced upgrades" concept (related to planned obsolescence).“Remind yourself of the fact that by battling competition through "dumping" techniques [1, 2], Microsoft is able to monopolise. But there's more than just ensuring the everyone uses the same software. There is potential to extract a lot of more money, which no longer depends on the "forced upgrades" concept (related to planned obsolescence).

It's the wet dream of the proprietary software industry. It also applies to music, video, written publications. The industry wants you to pay for the same thing over and over again. The fashion industry is pretty much the same, but it can't force these issues. It's just a social force (peer pressure).

With a subscription only (no purchase), the seller gets the equivalent of installments and the seller is temping more people to become 'hooked'. To quote a friend, "they are ensuring that everyone who uses their "IP" pays over and over and over again, for the "privilege" of accessing the same "IP", in perpetuity."

To quote another person, "So, just when I thought their software couldn't get any more expensive, they come up with this. From their point of view, this might scream huge profits, but I bet users will just get fed up eventually and go open source, for the most part."

The whole situation is rather intriguing in general. Microsoft software has always been rented (see the EULA), but it was never quite so time-limited in terms of use.

OOXML is about money



Forget about the renting model for a moment and consider the fact that Microsoft has also begun giving trial versions of Office. It is making that part of contracts with OEMs. It's a case of prebundling with a twist and some innocent buyers will 'type away' and be imprisoned by the proprietary format that is OOXML. Yes, it's the only format supported in the trial version, without fallback to old Microsoft Office formats. Jeremy Allison wrote about this a long time ago.

Related articles:

Microsoft has already bothered to patent the idea of renting software.

A Microsoft patent application from June 2005, published only today, titled "System and method for delivery of a modular operating system" may signal a fundamental change for what an operating systems stands for and how it is sold.


Intel, unsurprisingly, is part of this. Intel is also part of the "dumping" schemes against AMD and against Linux in Russian schools.

The pay-as-you-go model enabled by FlexGo makes PCs more accessible by reducing the initial cost and enabling customers to pay for computers through subscriptions or as they use them, through the purchase of prepaid activation cards or tokens.


Read the following good piece.

Want to write a Word document? Pay a few pennies. Want to download some digital photos? Pay a few more.

Under the idea, which Microsoft is introducing this week, people would be able to get a PC for their home with a mechanism that charges them depending on how much computing they use. Consumers would pay for about half of the PC upfront and then, say, 50 cents or 75 cents per hour of use. After several hundred hours of paid use, they would then own the PC outright.


Here is an older article from South Africa: Microsoft selling hobbled software to poor countries

Surprisingly, no-one seems to have told Microsoft that it is not good marketing strategy to treat your customers as if they are stupid. Which is exactly what the company is doing with the release in Africa of the stripped-down operating system it calls Windows XP Starter Edition.

Microsoft South Africa launched Windows XP Starter Edition (XPSE) into the African market last week with very little fanfare and market hype.

Which is not surprising considering how the product was received by other media on its intial launch in 2004. Known for its straight talking, The Register labelled XPSE "crippleware". Analysts Gartner said the product had "good intent, poor execution".

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nat Friedman Had Left Microsoft GitHub Exactly One Week Before Matthew Garrett Sent His First SLAPP (Which Was an Empty Threat, He Was Abusing the Legal System of Another Continent to Terrorise Critics Who Had Just Unearthed Major Microsoft Scandals)
And it was likely talked about by his lawyers around the exact same time Nat Friedman was packing up
 
Extortion is a Crime, Even If You're Based in Another Continent and Work for Microsoft
reported to British authorities
We're in 6/6 Now, Almost Halfway in 2025
2025 was probably the best year for us
South Americans Are Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
We're hardly even "Cherry-Picking" or conveniently singling out one South American nation
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part III: Data Protection Failures, Just Like at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Just less than a decade ago we showed that the EPO had illegally shared staff data with third parties
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 05, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 05, 2025
Pushing Microsoft's Proprietary Trash/Trap as "Open" and "Linux" (Windows is 'Linux' Now?)
Maybe it's time to just stop saying "FOSS". The people who use that term are promoting Microsoft.
Slopwatch: Comparing Linux to Vermin, Attacking BSD With LLM Slop, and Helping Microsoft Demonise Linux/OpenBSD/SSH Over Weak User Passwords
Microsoft must be laughing its arse off, seeing how a bunch of Serial Sloppers (no skills, no comprehension, no integrity, no creativity) and slopfarms use Microsoft LLM to flood the Web with anti-Linux FUD
Links 05/06/2025: US Poised for Another $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Cops Want GAFAM Kill Switches
Links for the day
Links 05/06/2025: First US Spacewalk 60 Years Ago, GNU Octave 10.2.0 is Out
Links for the day
Scandinavia Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
The Danes have had enough of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in Bangladesh, According to statCounter
Windows isn't growing, it's going away
Gemini Links 05/06/2025: Loop Earplugs Review and ANS Forth
Links for the day
Armenian Adoption of GNU/Linux
Russian influence in Armenian must be worrying to Microsoft
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part II: Turning a Once-Respected Patent Office Into a Circus and Laughing Stock
It's not legal, but administrators who don't care about the law and don't fear the law would just go ahead and turn things to junk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 04, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 04, 2025
Slopwatch: Mindless Slop Pieces, Fake Images and Text, Linux FUD on the Cheap
spewed out by Microsoft-controlled LLMs
Links 04/06/2025: Workers' Strikes, Sudan Exodus
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: Linux Foundation PR Spam and Lee Jae-myung Wins Election
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Future Leaders of the World and Platforming Jordan Peterson
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: WSL Backfiring on Microsoft and "Disney, Microsoft Announce Massive Layoffs"
Links for the day
Our Case is a Very Easy Win, the SLAPPs From Microsofters Were a Grave Error, and Censoring Information Won't Work (It'll Only Ever Backfire)
Censoring is what people do when they lose the argument
Say the Truth, the Rest Will Follow
There's no guarantee that writing the truth will result in an audience (or readership), but over time - in the long run - people generally gravitate towards what they know or feel to be crude truth, not just what's comforting (albeit false or self-deluding, usually groupthink dictated from above)
How to Expose High-Level Corruption Without Getting in (Too Much) Trouble
Democracy depends on free press and freedom of the press depends on being able to safely publish (and keep available) material that bad people don't want to be known to anybody
In-Depth EPO Coverage at Techrights Turns Eleven
11 years is a very long time
Windows Measured Below 10% in Afghanistan, GNU/Linux Gaining a Lot
about 80% are Android (Linux) users, compared to only about 10% for Windows
Poland's Political Predicament and Social Control Media
Democracy and fake "tech" don't mix well; the latter tends to interfere with the former and that's why we get more "Putins" out there
EPO: Taking Away From the Staff to Give More to the Rich
The Central Staff Committee (CSC) wrote to EPO staff earlier this week
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 03, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 03, 2025
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part I: It's a Lot Like the EPO
we can commence a series soon
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Inescapable Questions and Quitting All "Oligarch Tech"
Links for the day