[citation][nom]AndrewMD[/nom]Microsoft is a business, not your friend. You want to use free software, go ahead, Microsoft is not stopping you. What they are doing is giving access to their software to more people.[/citation]
Microsoft would stop you from using competitor's products, if they could. They have used monopoly power in the past to destroy competitors, and make manufacturers pay for Windows on every machine they sold, even if they didn't install it on that machine.
Were you implying people didn't have ummmm, access to Microsoft Office before this? Really?
This is an old motivation for Microsoft - they want to get people used to paying a subscription and liking it. Because no one needs newer versions of Office, and it's a lot easier to collect money every month than convince people of something that is obviously not true.
They are in a good position because they have monopolies, but in a bad one because no one needs, or even wants in most cases, their next release. They rape people anyway, by making their licenses for new computers usable only on that computer, so they get to sell new copies even when people don't need a new OS. After all, Dell can't sell a retail copy if it makes the machine cost over $100 more, and the customer doesn't really understand it. And Microsoft certainly doesn't offer a discount on these new licenses if you had an old one. More than that, if you wanted the old OS, you actually had to pay for the new OS, and then a charge on top of it. Yes, that's really fair. You make an OS that I don't want, so I have to pay extra to get the one I do want on my machine, so you can force your bad software down my throat, or I pay out the nose.
Yes, this is a company I really like and want to do business with. Luckily, they are failures at everything where their monopoly power doesn't hold sway, and are still only matter in operating systems and office software. Oh, and toys that are extremely unreliable, and have created new abbreviations for their frequent failures.