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Microsoft Kills Office Anti-Piracy Program
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.'"
They probably were more interested in discovering how many pirated copies might be out there rather than thwarting them. Microsoft has always been about market share even if they have to give it way to get it. They practically encouraged people to pirate Windows in the 3.x days.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
...on what large account threatened to go to OpenOffice if Microsoft kept nagging 'em?
More seriously (because I know how enterprise licensing works, and I know that an enterprise account was not likely the reason behind this) I dare say that the program simply wasn't profitable--that people either cracked the program to stop nagging 'em if they pirated it, or went to some competitor. No profits = no use nagging.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
It cost money to maintain and stopped no one. There is no point to it.
My theory is that they are scrapping it because it worked. If it works, people can't run their pirated copy of Office whatever, and instead of running out to the store like a good little lemming to buy the latest MS Office. They instead go and download OpenOffice, LibreOffice, or just start using Google Apps.
LibreOffice is good enough for me.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Did they mean there’s no longer any advantage to using Genuine Office?
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
Get MS Office Home & Student edition, pay a rather reasonable cost of $149 (CDN) and live and breathe free! This version will satisfy most people's needs with Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
How about they kill activation too while they are at it, especially for VLK licensees? Why businesses have to bounce machines off of MS's activation servers when they will end up getting rebuilt anyway, or have to set up core MAK servers for six month activations at a time is insane. A business is under the barrel of the BSA anyway, so they won't be pirating Windows/Office (at least if they want to stay in business after firing an employee who rats them out.)
OGA/WGA/activation is pointless. It annoys the legit users while the pirates are happily ignoring it.
I started putting copies of Open Office on computers I worked on or when people asked me for a copy of office. Most people are happy with it, outside of a friend who was a medical transcriptionist and had some special apps that were tied into MS Office.
Back in the day, whenever I set up a new computer, the first disk I reached for after the OS install was MS Office. Things have changed so much now that I can hardly remember the last time I fired up a word processor and actually used it. If it wasn't for the occasional spreadsheet at work, I could easily do without any office suite. I can now put together a new PC for myself and it is months before I realize I didn't install any type of "office" software on it.
And even the spreadsheets we use at work now, I'm in the process of migrating to a database with a web-based front end.
Times change and this is one area that changed a lot. And Open Office works pretty well for the light duty things still hanging around.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
That's not really true. Microsoft has always been strongly against piracy.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article2098235.ece "It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not," the Microsoft co-founder and chairman told Fortune magazine.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/2803
WSJ: But those were stolen, correct?
Gates: Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.
Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox’s store before I did and took the TV doesn’t mean I can’t go in later and steal the stereo.”
–Bill Gates
“In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems.” –Bill Gates
Bill Gates on Piracy: "They'll get addicted, and then we'll collect"
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If you try to run a Terminal Server without your own license, it won't be anywhere near as easy as running Windows or Office. It shows they know how to lock down software when they want to.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I received an email from Chase Online Banking today saying Microsoft is retiring their Money software. Here's the text...
We have been notified that Microsoft® is retiring their Money and Money Plus software. As a result, we will no longer support Microsoft Money at chase.com. Starting January 31, 2011: * We will remove or disable all online banking features within Money. * You will not be able to use Money to download transactions from Chase Online. * You will still have the ability to download your transactions from chase.com as a file to import into your Money software. * Any charges you are currently charged by us in order to use Money with Chase Online will end. Please note that if you choose to continue downloading your Chase Online transactions into Personal Financial Management (PFM) software to pay bills or make transfers, you’ll need to switch to another software, such as Quicken® or QuickBooks®. PFM software fees to use other software with Chase Online may still apply.
or, you can pay $0.0149 to download Open Office . Then you'll really live and breathe free!
You won't have to worry about MS License police deciding that you're not (any longer) qualified for the student discount and should pay $x0,000 in license fees and penalties.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
My computer like a few came with MSO pre-installed. I didn't mind the initial legit check (I still have the licence key) and subsequent download of updates. It's when a few months later it asked, nay, demanded to check again. Later I opened a document and it asked again, and again, and again so on and so forth. An e-mail natter back and forth with someone whose spelling could be better at Microsoft help got me nowhere. "Have you entered the correct licence key?" "Have you un-installed and re-installed, then re-entered the licence key?" There must be something better I thought. So I gave Open Office a try. A free office program? It must be a bit naff, full of bugs I thought. Well I was surprised, I've had no problems with it and it covers all my needs. I haven't looked back since.
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.
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, 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
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why would I need an appointment calendar inside my email client?
I guess because you often want to set up appointments with the same people with whom you correspond through e-mail.
nebulous security reasons
They are not so nebulous - when we put Outlook on the internet, it got pwned. They don't dare put Outlook on the internet naked anymore - we have it behind this secured XMLRPC gateway that MS bought from an Israeli security company ("Internet Application Gateway").
I agree that some of the reason is just pure spite against other software. We previously had an IMAP server, so I could pick up my mail using Thunderbird from anywhere. Now we have Outlook, it's the only program that implements the IAG client, so it's either some horrible crippleware webmail, or Windows + Outlook.