Naming and shaming all "recurring spending models" where a one-time fee (or none at all) would be appropriate and logical.
Expect use of strong language.
Follow the basic rules of lemmy.world and common sense, and try to have fun if possible.
No flamewars or attacking other users, unless they're spineless corporate shills.
Note that not all subscriptions are awful. Supporting your favorite ~~camgirl~~ creator or Lemmy server on Patreon is fine. An airbag with subscription is irl Idiocracy-level dystopian bullshit.
New community rule: Shilling for cunty corporations, their subscriptions and other anti-customer practices may result in a 1-day ban. It's so you can think about what it's like when someone can randomly decide what you can and can't use, based on some arbitrary rules. Oh what, you didn't read this fine print? You should read what you're agreeing to.
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Some other groovy communities for those who wish to own their products, their data and their life:
Some other useful links:
Louis Rossman's YouTube channel
Look at content hosted at Big Tech without most of the nonsense:
reference to this, i'm guessing:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/05/28/microsoft-is-killing-office-2019-for-mac-and-iphone-and-you-cant-do-much-about-it
apparently it's due to an expiring digital certificate. this older version is 'end of life' and because it isn't receiving updates anymore, microsoft's lust for profits says it won't get a renewed certificate either.
Two words: Libre Office
Abso-fucking-lutely.
Also, if anyone out there's wanting to learn about other ways to get away from paying for subs, I did a series of videos on this earlier this year.
Any chance you have a text version?
EDIT: Posted the text list of the alternatives lower in the thread.
Yes. The description in each video has chapters in the description telling you application or software names, for the TLDW crowd.
But I can write up a quick list if you life. Happy to do it.
A text version where I don't need to load any video seems a lot more useful. Not that your face isn't adorable.
Okay, here's the abridged version of my 'Stop Paying For' series. I hope something here is new to you and helps you give the billionaires a kick in the dick. Happy to write it out because I hate billionaires that much, but if this is useful to anyone out there, I'd appreciate a like on one of my videos. Being a small creator who vocally supports FOSS/alternative apps is tough.
Euro Alternative Apps (To Divest from US Apps)
Spotify Alternatives
Cheaper Video Games
Netflix Alternatives
FOSS Software
I wish I could send users a dollar as easily as hitting the updoot button. Keep being awesome.
Happy to help. Thank you for the kind words!
Just use Massgrave for Microsoft stuff.
someone with an affected version would have to try that, but i'm guessing if legit perpetual 2019 licenses are dead upon expiry of that certificate, mas won't help either. moving to 2021 or newer won't work either, as the affected users' macos version won't support newer office versions.
I am altering the license; pray I do not alter it any further. - Microsoft
You know whats really weird? Office 2019 just went on sale a few weeks ago.
https://www.techspot.com/news/100909-get-microsoft-office-29-one-time-purchase.html
It's like Microsoft wanted to squeeze a few extra dollars out of customers. But id be pissed if I bought it and found out it was being locked down 3 weeks later...
Although to be clear only the Mac version is being discontinued. For now.
That was not a real sale.
It's a fake article pretending that there's a sale in order to make affiliate money selling grey market keys from msdn. Those keys activate, but they don't come with a valid license to use, those are supposed for testing only on that specific msdn account.
It works like this: the fake tech blog gets 40%, the rest goes to the keys seller, Microsoft gets 0%.
Fuck Microsoft, but at that point is more ethical to just use massgrave and activate it for free
Honestly, as much as I want to shit on Microsoft, this is probably more a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. They're a massive disorganized mess of a company.
pfft AI is improving everything, how can you say this?
I wonder if that divison's copilot ran out of tokens. That's probably the issue.
you know I was about to buy licenses for some software from microslop. seeing as they clearly disregard their responsibilities upholding the agreements they make, I have no reason to believe they'll continue to do so for any of their licensed software.
makes it easy for me. I'll just pirate it.
thanks microslop!
You do whatever you want with the resources and constrains you have.
But in my humble opinion, the best move would have been to migrate to LibreOffice and make a donation matching the MS Office license, or migrate to Collabora office (it's based on LO), or another opensource alternative.
Again: that may not be possible for you personnally, and I'm not judging. This is only to remind everyone there are alternatives out there.
Yet another reason why paying for software is stupid.
Software is made by people (good software, not slop) ~~which~~ who deserve a living too. Expensive, extortionate software pricing is a different thing.
Making software developers' livelihoods depend on who can give them enough money is stupid. It'll inevitably lead to situations like this where shitty products get made by virtue of them being sponsored by rich bastards.
Just give them a universal basic income and let everything be open source volunteer stuff.
Fine, let's work toward that. Until then, that's not how things work.
I'm very happy with my monthly payments (donation) to libreoffice, freecad, KDE, e/os, signal, among a few others.
Not much different than their revoking of Win 11 licenses because the hardware changed...
They'll keep pulling this BS because people are 'locked in'.
I bought RAM in 2026 because of how much I want to finally get rid of Windows. Can't wait to get my build up and running.
"By perpetual we meant you can perpetually have them, not that they'll perpetually work."
I'm glad I've entirely moved away from Microsoft products. Worst of the worst.
Amen! Nothing but Google here.
/s
We have No Killing Games, now wet me need No Killing Software…
Not really. People should be encouraged, after seeing how bad the software provider treats them, to switch to open source - or at least to software of less shitty companies. You can't do that with games - each game is a unique^1 piece of art and culture.
Games have a cultural element to it.
Non-game software doesn't. It's much harder to convince politicians.
The argument for non-game software would be economical. But most big companies pay the subscriptions, since they want to have the latest version (if not for the features, at least for the security patches). So they're not affected. The most affected by this is consumers and small companies. Which don't have a lot of power.
The way to fix this is to support the competitors that don't do this kind of shit. For office in particular, there's even free alternatives.
Gotta get those CoPilot numbers up
someone call Louis Rossman !
Can't be bothered to go any further than the headline, eh?
o lol
I moved to Linux. I really liked Linux mint, but had some issues. Dove deep into learning about Linux to get at least a slight understanding.
Absolutely LOVE cachyos with KDE plasma desktop environment. It even has an app page on load up to download everything I needed, steam, DVD burner, librewolf, etc etc.