Microsoft quietly shuts down Office Genuine Advantage program | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft quietly shuts down Office Genuine Advantage program

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78 pointsilamont52 comments

Microsoft relies on Office piracy as a strange means of price discrimination. The product requires network effects to maintain its near-monopoly position in the corporate world, and having a significant portion of people in "document sharing" networks say, "I don't have Office" is a threat. So, what Microsoft's quietly made decision says to me is that they are worried that a sufficiently large enough portion of computer users were both unwilling to pay for Office and unwilling to bother pirating it.

On Black Friday, many online retailers were running specials on a Home/Student Office "Family Pack" -- three legal installs for $100. This is a midpoint between the corporate price point and free. Perhaps an attempt to introduce another segment? I recall the availability of home/student editions in the past, but the price points were always much higher.

I think Microsoft is attempting to target students more aggressively, perhaps because of the appearance of other cheap/free options on the market in recent years. Just last year Office 2007 was on sale to students at $60.

The university my wife attends (in the USA) has some kind of weird site license where students get it for free from the IT department if they are willing to drop off their laptop with the university. (This isn't a bad deal, since probably the average freshman also buys their laptop from the university anyway). They can pay $10 to get the DVD themselves. (This is a very large state supported school.)

My school (even larger and state supported) charges like $92 for the same thing.

I've not figured out why two almost identical schools about 20 miles apart have such a different pricing scheme for their students.

I do know that in our relationship, my wife buys all the software. :)

I attended two state Universities in Texas, and both had cheap licenses like you describe. I don't think it's so weird.

They just hand them out here. And Windows Vista Ultimate.

The difference in pricing is likely due to the schools participating in different programs. Feel free to reach out to me if you're interested in seeing your school have a similar program as the one your wife attends. I would be happy to put you in touch with someone who'll know more about that topic than I do.

My university in Germany offers all students all somewhat current versions of Windows for free (including Windows 7 Professional), you can download it as often as you want and generate a ton of keys. It would actually be more useful for me if they offered Office but they don’t. You can get Office for less than 100€, though.

Any student with a cooperating higher-education centre can get loads of free Microsoft software (of notability, VS 2010, Expression Studio 4) through DreamSpark[1] as well as getting Office for a huge discount[2] (at least in the UK).

[1] https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx [2] http://store.digitalriver.com/store?Action=DisplayStudentHer...

Also anyone can register as student member in IEEE for $19 and get access to e-academy MSDN.

Our corporate parent has some sort of deal with Microsoft that lets you purchase a legit copy for $10 (total with shipping and sales tax is about $27 if you want the DVD delivered). The folks at the office (who have taken advantage of it) mention that they've also been allowed the 3-machine activation per key.

Sounds like an Enterprise Agreement - they are pretty standard for larger organizations. They seem to come with Home Usage licenses which were described to us as "free" but with a £10 delivery cost for the download!

From my brief conversations about Office licenses, I think that the Home Usage licenses are a side effect of the per-machine licensing policy for Office. Microsoft explicitly say that you need an Office license for the machine that you're sat at while running it, so if you're accessing a Citrix server from your home PC then that home PC needs an Office license (even if it's not running Windows). That means that the sort of places buying Enterprise agreements, with large VPNs, need a license for all of the PCs at home. So these basically come bundled once you're buying enough.

I assume that the £10 cost is just for the media (rounded up a little!). We never got as far as offering this to our users though.

A lot of companies avoided these as originally MS made the company liable for ensuring that the software was uninstalled from the home machine when the individual left the company. As a result the companies said screw that and just never made it available to staff (rightly working out that there was no way that could make that guarantee).

I believe that this restriction has been lifted now though so some may revisit it.

We were told that it was the individuals responsibility - with there being a clear hint that they didn't care.

As I said, they've changed it now but a few years back whatever they may have said when they spoke to you and whatever they hinted at, the contract and license said it was your responsibility very clearly.

+1 Perhaps it's their way of dealing with the fact that Office is just too expensive for many people, without acknowledging that to the public by dropping the price.

People who don't use Office for business would struggle to justify $209 AUD (RRP for Home and Student edition) to themselves just to write the occasional letter - even if they're not aware of Google Docs or other alternatives.

There is one important network effect they seem to be neglecting - the "big ball of mud" network effect of having hundreds of Excel spreadsheets all linked into each other, forming critical parts of the finance infrastructure of megacorps. This kind of end-user-computing nightmare is so hard to migrate away from that most companies can't even conceive how to do it.

However, regulatory schemes like SOX in the USA and Solvency II and Basel III in Europe, are forcing the issue. Big banks and insurers won't be allowed to carry on running critical finance operations on such a fragile stack, so there are currently huge migrations away from Excel happening all across the financial services industry. Software like SAS and Business Objects seem to be the anti-Excels of choice.

There will obviously still be Excel on the desktop, used for ad-hoc data manipulation and visualization, which is what it is actually good for, but this type of usage is much easier to replace with something like OpenOffice.

My experience is that corporates have no great desire to migrate away from Office though.

Finance users will insist (with some justification) that OO Calc isn't as good as Excel, the training department will point out reskilling costs for all the admin staff, the senior managers won't be keen to move away from PowerPoint which they all know and all of a sudden a few hundred quid a head will seem not worth saving.

I'm a fan of MS Word, I really am. These days though, I find that, as an amateur writer, I prefer simpler tools - markdown or google docs. I think this is a slow trend they are (or should be) worried about.

For home users, gmail thoroughly beats Outlook.

Excel is a different beast. I don't have much experience with it, but I've seen it used widely at various places of work (medical and financial). I'd say Excel is now their strongest product when it comes to maintaining a stranglehold.

When you consider the price, advances in google docs, gmail and and OpenOffice, I'm not sure Office is really a good value for most folk. They think they need it - that's a dangerous position to be in - selling a product because people think they need it, rather than actually needing it.

Agreed.

In my opinion, Word is the best app ever to come from Microsoft.

Really? What do you like about it?

Maybe I'm just prejudiced against WYSIWYG word processors in general, but I've always considered Word a bit of a usability and productivity disaster. What am I missing using LaTeX or Framemaker?

Now Excel, on the other hand - the world would just stop working without Excel.

I can't think of a better WYSIWYG editor than Word, and the world obviously needs one, not everyone is going to tackle the learning curve on LaTeX or Framemaker. I'm ok at LaTeX, but I'll use Word for a short job. LaTeX is hard and will trip me up, Word is hard to manage large documents in, so for small pieces of work, Word, for large, LaTeX.

And yes, my world would definitely not work without Excel.

Have you tried LyX? http://www.lyx.org/

"""What am I missing using LaTeX"""

Non fiddling access to hundreds of Open Type fonts and UTF-8?

Trivial visual layout changes of almost every aspect of the text instead of having to write then in a layout language?

Integrated spell/grammar checking as you go, word count et al?

Non in Word per se, but BETTER algorithms for typesetting in WYSIWYG (unknown to many, InDesign and Quark have progressed A LOT over TeX's algorithms).

Interoperability for the basic edited document format (not through pdf, ps, html exports) with 99% percent of the world (excluding some parts of Academia that prefer LaTeX)?

Sorry - I didn't mean to be too controversial with my post. It's just that I've found that based on the way I think, Word is a big productivity sink for me. I have a harder time concentrating on the business of writing when I'm staring at richly laid-out text and paragraphs. For me at least, I've always found that I can write faster and with fewer mental blocks when writing plain old text in a text editor. I found that in my own experience, it was liberating just focussing on the content of what I was writing, knowing that the whole business of presentation was something that came later.

Non fiddling access to hundreds of Open Type fonts and UTF-8?

Xetex + \usepackage{fontspec}

No fiddling required!

Trivial visual layout changes of almost every aspect of the text instead of having to write then in a layout language?

Isn't this sort of the problem with WYSIWYG in general, though? That's actually one of the things that I think is cool about Framemaker - it's roughly WYSIWYG, but you can get a bird's-eye view of styles and layout.

Being able to accidentally futz up the margins on the third paragraph on the 209th page of a 401 page article and not know it without meticulously re-inspecting the document before it goes to press doesn't seem like a feature to me. Has Word tackled that yet?

Can Word give me a nice, hierarchical view of all the paragraph and character styles and margin settings that have been applied to my article? This isn't rhetoric either - I'm genuinely curious. If you tell me that Word has been able to do this since I've last used it, my opinion of Word will be much improved. If you tell me that Word has always been able to do this, I'll feel pretty silly.

Integrated spell/grammar checking as you go, word count et al?

My text editor does that for me, and I'm not distracted by presentation issues while I type my document.

Non in Word per se, but BETTER algorithms for typesetting in WYSIWYG (unknown to many, InDesign and Quark have progressed A LOT over TeX's algorithms).

How so? Text flow around images is an issue in TeX - have Quark or InDesign really improved much otherwise?

Interoperability for the basic edited document format (not through pdf, ps, html exports) with 99% percent of the world (excluding some parts of Academia that prefer LaTeX)?

I think this and ease of use are really Word's big edge over anything else.

> Xetex + \usepackage{fontspec} No fiddling required!

I'm not in an ASCII-english speaking country, and it's not like that at all. And all projects that started to rectify TeX with regards to unicode text, have fallen behind or are totally abandoned (I speak of stuff like LaTeX3e, Omega et al).

> Isn't this sort of the problem with WYSIWYG in general, though?

For some it's the problem, for others it's the allure. I like Framemaker style tools myself --but Adobe it has had it stagnate, and it's also not on the Mac.

> Can Word give me a nice, hierarchical view of all the paragraph and character styles and margin settings that have been applied to my article?

It has styles, and can present a list of them et al. Not many people use it that way, but it's quite powerful. Not as powerful as Framemaker though.

> My text editor does that for me, and I'm not distracted by presentation issues while I type my document.

No, but you are distracted of keeping a syntax NOT RELATED to the document content in your head.

> How so? Text flow around images is an issue in TeX - have Quark or InDesign really improved much otherwise?

There have been improved hyphenation/justification algorithms during the 90's that InDesign et al utilize, that provide better visual output even for simple paragraph text compared to plain ole TeX. Mainly utilizing the hz algorithm.

Xetex is still actively maintained, and at the very least it's utf-8 aware. Googling around, I found that non-ASCII users report that Xetex doesn't really do a very good job of handling language-specific spacing, but at the same time there are an abundance of packages and extensions to Xetex that address a lot of these issues. I'm curious though - where are you from? Would Xetex really be unworkable where you come from?

For some it's the problem, for others it's the allure. I like Framemaker style tools myself --but Adobe it has had it stagnate, and it's also not on the Mac.

Yes - I too was disappointed when they killed the Mac version.

It has styles, and can present a list of them et al. Not many people use it that way, but it's quite powerful. Not as powerful as Framemaker though.

If Word had a mode where it could enforce styles - prevent me from accidentally dragging a paragraph margin around with the flick of the mouse or something - if Word insisted that every bit of formatting in the document came from one of the named styles, that alone would be progress.

No, but you are distracted of keeping a syntax NOT RELATED to the document content in your head.

Well, I've been able to learn TeX/LaTeX syntax - so for me it's a sunken cost. And for me at least, it's a lot less distracting than the tools and accoutrements of WYSIWYG text editing. YMMV.

Interesting - I've never heard of the hz algorithm - although Wikipedia has this to say about it:

According to Zapf,[3] Hàn Thế Thành made a detailed analysis of the Hz-program for micro-typography extensions to the TeX typesetting system and implemented them in pdfTeX. These are available as part of the LaTeX and ConTeXt typesetting packages.

So it might be as straightforward as \usepackage{microtype}? I've looked at the pdfTeX document on the microtype package and it does indeed seem to improve the text layout quite a bit, at least with the font expansion feature.

I disagree, Excel is the best app ever to come out of Microsoft! :-)

I've done entire engineering courses (200 and 300-level) with nothing but Excel. And there are certainly more powerful applications to do maths in but once you get past the simple interface it real is quite powerful.

Agreed. A few years back I looked at several other spreadsheet programs and wasn't able to find one that even approached Excel.

Agreed, Excel is an amazing app. It's also Microsoft's strongest hold on businesses. I doubt there is more than a couple percent of businesses that don't depend on Excel in some fashion for their accounting.

Every company I've been in has Excel spreadsheets for things like budgets and expense tracking. They were all written long ago and no one is really quite sure how they work.

A lot of commenters seem confused about this: you still have to validate Office to get it to work, or pirate it to circumvent the check. The change is that Microsoft will let you download Office add-ons without verifying that said validation occurred, so pirate versions can now access the downloads.

If you run a print/copy shop or need Office for precise in-company document compatibility (or addins), you will want MS Office and you will easily afford a license or two.

As for everyone else, OpenOffice has 99% of the features, so it's not even worth the trouble of pirating it.

As for everyone else, OpenOffice has 99% of the features, so it's not even worth the trouble of pirating it.

But pirating it just got a little bit easier, so Microsoft have shifted the balance a little away from OpenOffice.

Excel is the tool of choice for non techies who need "database like" functionality but the word database scares the crap out of them. Large companies wrap multi million dollar businesses around Excel, and I think there will always be a market for an app like this.

I only recently began using Office 2010 at my office and feel like this is what office 2003(or if Im feeling generous, 2007) should have been. Outlook is an anachronism as far as Im concerned- even connected to exchange. There are so many modal features about it still that are infuriating, but its getting to an almost gmail usability level. If gmail integrated calendaring as well as outlook I would forward all my work email to a gmail address and never touch outlook.

MsWord stil is hands down much better than any free equivalent I have tried, but I only need this app ~5 - 10 times per year.

I wish they had an "Office for people who really dont need office that much" version that was on some sort of azure/pay for need basis(where the cost was minimal and paying wasn't) because that is what I need. I dont want to have a few GB of hardly used real estate on my hard disk for when I need to update a resume.

>>Excel is the tool of choice for non techies who need "database like" functionality but the word database scares the crap out of them.

In fact I use Excel only as client for MS Analysis Services. It's my tool of choice. Not flawless, but I can't find something better.

Microsoft releasing actual legitimate open source code (http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/) , and relaxing restrictions on "piracy." Next thing you know, Windows 9 will be based on Linux.

Next thing you know, Windows 9 will be based on Linux.

I don't think I'd stop partying & celebrating for at least a week. Non-stop.

That is my personal private dream- that one day, Windows will have a true Unix core like OSX.

I think Microsoft would just run chmod 777 and chown root:wheel to the entire filesystem (and any attached disks) and then proceed to run everything as root with a special sandbox for users based on ACLs.

And they would probably use ext2 and add journals to it.

I'm not sure if that's supposed to be funny, but Microsoft's own NTFS bests all of the last generation of filesystems in both features, stability, and performance.

Only recently have unix filesysetms matched and surpassed NTFS (which was built back in the very early 90s!). reisrfs, btrfs, xfs, jfs, zfs, etc. are better than NTFS in some ways, but all the "traditional" unix filesystems do not even come close (ext2/3, hfs, ufs).

... but they still run everything as root.

Define "everything". User-land programs? Not root. Graphics stack? Not root or kernel-space. A quick look at task manager reveals that over 50% of what is running on my computer isn't running as System (root).

> NTFS bests all of the last generation of filesystems in both features,

Definitely no.

> stability,

So close to 100% it's hard to measure any difference. Well... Perhaps it beats BtrFS and other experimental/unfinished products. But, again, it doesn't beat it in features.

> and performance

One thing is sure - NTFS is the fastest OS on Windows.

Please re-read my post. I said "last generation" and not "this/next generation"

I clearly specify that btrfs is a better FS than NTFS. But btrfs is NOT from last generation.

Well... I agree that 2010 NTFS beats a lot of filesystems that were released in 2002 or so. That was kind of expected.

It's also notable NTFS is now catching up to some features that were part of Unix-heritage filesystems since the 90's. Like symlinks and mountpoints.

Eh, "2010 NTFS"? NTFS is more than decade old and it's 2002 version was also better than a lot of filesystem "released in 2002".

And NTFS had mountpoints since Windows 2000.

Correct - mount points are part of 2000 (NTFS 3). I have no doubt NTFS 3 was better than some filesystems released in 2002, provided enough people released filesystems in 2002. It was also probably better than many filesystems still in use on 2002.

Still, NTFS is catching up to other modern features like symlinks...

AFAIK, which is somewhat limited because I am not a Windows user and don't work in a Microsoft shop, NTFS has some cool features, like transactions, I don't think ext3 had. It also has compression (something that makes a lot of sense if you have more processor than disk bandwidth or space) and folder encryption. Oh.. And transactions. Did I miss something?

> I'm not sure if that's supposed to be funny

Only a little bit. Microsoft has a history of half-assing a great majority of their products. Windows 7 is a great example: it's wonderful compared to everything since Windows 95, but the interface is horribly inconsistent and their are things like UAC and 9 shutdown options that drive me batty. Windows 7 still manages to crash on resume from sleep often enough I refuse to trust it.

(don't get me started on vista or IE!)

Your dream, my nightmare.

I'm kind of surprised by this. If they had just shut down the bit that forces you to validate, but left a way for you to validate your copy, that would make more sense to me.

I mean, some people might genuinely want to know for sure.

Of course, it's possible that they shut this down while they put up something even more bothersome.

> I mean, some people might genuinely want to know for sure.

Are these the same people that want to go through TSA screenings just to make sure they aren't dangerous?

I have known people who bought used computers or Office software, and had no idea that their software was pirated until they attempted to reinstall it. While it is sometimes obvious when software is pirated, it often is not.

Arr, my mateys, the battle is ours!

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