Monday, December 17th 2018
Future Microsoft Office Versions Look to be Subscription Only
A job listing posted by Microsoft is being hailed as sign of subscription-based times to come to the company's Office 365 and Windows products. Honestly, I believe this to be a matter of time - Subscription services have been increasing at an alarming rate, Microsoft has already tasted the advantages of such a model on their bottom line with their Xbox Live and Games Pass systems, and of course, there're always the ever-giant Spotifys and Netflixes of this world.
Windows and Office as a service is nothing out of the ordinary, really. The job listing for a "Product Manager, M365 Consumer Subscription - Modern Life & Devices (MLD)", which has a job description along the lines of "market a great new Microsoft 365 Consumer Subscription" doesn't come as a surprise. Going from this Office 365 consumer subscription to a Windows one is a bit of a stretch on the basis of the job posting alone, but it is in the foreseeable future for Microsoft's strategy to safeguard Windows and its updates behind a monthly payment, ensuring that one-off purchases are no longer a thing - and guaranteeing a predictable revenue stream.
Of course, enterprises usually prefer to own things instead of having them in a rent model, but Office 365 for businesses has already paved the way for tighter integration of subscription services in the professional world. For users, though... Microsoft would just love to put their hands in a steady revenue stream from the OEM market - licenses for Microsoft's OS could ship with one or two years in-box, with subsequent version updates (outside the usual security updates, we'd guess and hope) would be locked behind a monthly payment. There's no way this model would leave users better off than before - Microsoft wouldn't change a model to one that would bring them less revenue, and the OEM market is a huge source of untapped, renewable revenue. We'll see how this shakes up.
Sources:
Microsoft, PCgamesHardware.de
Windows and Office as a service is nothing out of the ordinary, really. The job listing for a "Product Manager, M365 Consumer Subscription - Modern Life & Devices (MLD)", which has a job description along the lines of "market a great new Microsoft 365 Consumer Subscription" doesn't come as a surprise. Going from this Office 365 consumer subscription to a Windows one is a bit of a stretch on the basis of the job posting alone, but it is in the foreseeable future for Microsoft's strategy to safeguard Windows and its updates behind a monthly payment, ensuring that one-off purchases are no longer a thing - and guaranteeing a predictable revenue stream.
62 Comments on Future Microsoft Office Versions Look to be Subscription Only
In other words, it’s an office 365 job. Nothing more has been said anywhere or mentioned in the announcement.
trog
That said, I really doubt Microsoft can justify this internally. I expect it to be nothing, at least for now.
And even if in a few years time they do offer a subscription license, I expect it to be at least at first, something where both flavours will be available to consumers before the standalone is phased out. Plenty of time for people to contribute to WINE or other compatibility efforts and put the fear of Open Source into Microsoft - Especially businesses, who will see longterm volume licensing as a potential money-pit and will doutbless start looking into migration en-masse.
It will still technically be W10 if this ever happens, but I just don't see anything in that job posting that indicates they're planning on doing this now.
The simple fact is, MS aren't stupid enough to give Linux and FOSS OS solutions the massive helping hand that a W10 subscription model would give them in terms of wider adoption. If they made that decision, it would be a matter of maybe a decade before Linux became a dominant OS in some fields, simply because of the huge spur of development it would receive.
Remember, Linux isn't just about which programmers want to give up their spare time to contribute to the ecosystem - There are already businesses who get paid to contribute to said ecosystem, like Red Hat, Canonical and so on. If MS fuck up and push their pricing for Windows too high, these companies will receive cash injections from businesses looking to cut longterm costs via a short-term investment in switching to FOSS or partially FOSS solutions.
If they decide that it IS worth that, it's a small jump from there, to seeing companies spring up specialising in migrating between OS's for companies, and developing custom tools, software, compatibility layers, etc.
Those efforts in turn would pave the way for commercial entities to make more software for linux and contribute to the existing ecosystem in a way that would have benefits for consumers looking to make the same switch. Cross compiling for different architectures or OS's isn't easy, but it's already done on the larger scale and the primary reason there isn't already a huge effort to replace windows with these FOSS solutions, is Windows relatively affordable pricing, which makes it more cost effective for businesses to buy licenses for software people are already familiar with, rather than to pay for retraining staff to use new software. Make the longterm cost of that too high and even Microsoft's virtual monopoly on consumer OSs will swiftly disappear.
- Rental mobile phone (NOT APPLE)- Rental Games
- Rental Movies/TV Series
- Rental Music
- Rental Ms Office
- Rental Operating System
- Rental PC, embed special chip to brick your PC after certain period of time or you do not pay the subcription
you own NOTHING, we own YOU !
From a relatively brief reading, I saw nothing in the document that indicates Microsoft can change the expectation of payment or form of payment from the consumer. It only covers that the software is licensed and not sold, to the consumer. Also, NONE of the words "Cancel" "Renewal" or "Payment" appear in the document at any point. The word "End" does appear, but only twice, as part of "End Users" and "End Use".
This page www.microsoft.com/en-gb/servicesagreement/ also does not seem to cover anything to do with eventualities wherein Microsoft may ask you to begin paying for software to which you already hold a valid license that was not sold under the provision said license was time-limited.
Finally and foremostly, I do not believe it is legal for any software company to sell an unlimited license for the use of any software, and to then deny users access to that software according to that license, unless the consumer has violated the terms of the license agreement in some way. Even if Microsoft were to update the terms of the license, consumers should have the option to continue using a version of the software that was provided according to the older terms, and simply to agree to the cessation of supplementary services provided by the vendor/retailer as part of that agreement if they refuse to agree to the updated terms.
Really the closest I could find in the entire document, to what you just said, was this phrase:But this in and of itself doesn't constitute a viable way in which Microsoft, having already received payment, could then demand additional and ongoing payments from consumers - especially as the existing terms do not discuss payment in any way shape or form, so there would be a reasonable (and likely legally defensible) expectation from consumers and businesses that future versions of the agreement should not expand the scope of the agreement to include an expectation for further payment.
Granted, I Am Not A Lawyer - But I very much doubt that issues of exploitative license-changes have not come up many times in most countries and jurisdictions at this point - I would be very surprised if, given the lack of existing discussion of payment in these terms, there is not AMPLE precedent to stop MS from ever enacting what you suggest. In fact, that is likely why "Office 365" is a different product, with a different name and license, to "regular" Microsoft Office.
Granted, that doesn't stop them from simply discontinuing a product and replacing it, nor does it stop them from forcing new customers to agree to a new agreement that is a subscription model - but I see no way they could legally force existing customers to begin paying them money for a product where they already purchased a license.
Buildings: They used to build them, now they rent.
Office car fleets: Used to purchase, now they lease.
Employees: Used to be all full time, Now some Full time + lots of Contractors.
Servers: First it was Purchase, then it was Lease, then it was Virtualize, now they host on AWS, Google, or Azure.
Microsoft Licensing: Used to be perpetual, now its 3 years + annual True-Up. IE even on the enterprise office version they were paying based on the license model, not the perpetual.
Essentially Enterprises want to be able to calculate expenses against profits. When they have to purchase outright it created irregular cash flow. When they can simply pay a monthly fee, cash flow is pretty stable.
Users (for the most part) prefer one and done as far as payment as it is less draining on monthly finances and they can always schedule big purchases around holidays, birthdays, bonus time at work, etc.