When people say a company is unserious they almost always mean that they're not thinking about, and taking seriously, the work that their customers do. This seems like a classic example of that.
Some define a standard others set it. This came up when my employer was applying for business continuity insurance
A serious company would never have allowed its core product to turn into the clown show it currently is, yet here we are, a massive corporation pushes an OS that feels vibe coded, and is largly propped up by what little residual community goodwill/ignorance exsists.
Something does not have to be useful, benign, consistent, worthwhile, or deserving to exist in order to be serious.
For example: Losing an arm and an eye to a fireworks accident, being grievously assaulted in an alley, or having Microsoft arbitrarily delete all your data, are all very serious things. So, I think it is fair to say Microsoft can still be called serious.
Just because an entity is able to do things with serious consequences, does not mean they are a serious entity.
For other examples, see school shooters in the US.
In history timeline, future archaeologists will probably see almost nothing, some books… as we are used to past centuries. But clouds, servers… gone.
BTW don’t use SSD for archiving.
Also, have a disaster recovery plan ready, and exercise it regularly.
None were caught in the Microsoft or Fastmail spam filters.
I replaced it with Thunderbird Mail.
I was quite unhappy to get a mail back in (checks archives) January that our grant would be discontinued and we’d either have to make do with the web versions of things, migrate someplace, or start paying. They also reminded us several more times before the drop date. I don’t really understand why Microsoft chose to discontinue the nonprofit grants, and it put a little egg on my face after I had recommended it to our board — but they definitely notified us of the change and what it would mean.
We’ve opted to pay for now; it’s $3/user/month for the SKU that gets full desktop versions of Office, Teams, etc. so not really breaking the bank compared to all the other things we have to pay for.
Fine, so I bought licenses but apparently Microsoft deletes "some" of the data. All groups were still there, users and the device ids.. but not the devices themselves. I could see all devices associated to a user but couldn't recreate or restore them in device management. Thus, I had to re-enroll multiple devices. Will migrate off Intune in the future, since it's garbage but haven't found a good alternative for Android devices yet.
Organisations that didn’t have an off-boarding option (do nothing, pay the minimum, I’ll deal with it) selected should receive monthly reminders, then every 2 weeks (to multiple people), and one per week until a VERY alarming one the week before. And, of course, have all systems shut down and the data archived for a grace period.
I hope they sue Microsoft for what seems neglect.
As far as I can tell, the only source for that claim is:
> And he later learned he wasn’t alone, when another company service representative called the very next day and told him that roughly 171,000 small nongovernmental organizations “lost everything” in their OneDrive accounts.
So a second hand account of remarks said over the phone by a low level employee/contractor.
That's an interesting data point to follow up on, but using a single indirectly relayed statement to make such a substantial claim doesn't seem consistent with journalistic standards.
Or managed to turn the good old notepad into a CVE 8 vulnerability?
Kidding aside, some bean counter somewhere thought that’s $5M revenue lost, instead of helping the community they’re supposedly a part of.
This quote contains linked sources but I can't see them since they're largely on Reddit and Facebook. The Microsoft ones suggest people were blindsided by this cancellation, and that the official support channels in Microsoft are broken. It seems like everyone who was blindsided also tried to submit an official support ticket and was unable to, which is in line with my experience interacting with Microsoft.
We strongly advise transitioning your users to a different Microsoft 365 offer for nonprofits, before the subscription is cancelled, to avoid disruption and data loss. Connect now with your current Microsoft partner – or find a partner – to get started. Learn more about what happens to your data and access when your subscription ends.
That last sentence links to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/commerce/sub...
“YOUR FILES WILL BE DELETED ON {DATE}” seems like it would have solved any ambiguity.
I clicked the link with text “more such claims”, and it appears to be someone complaining about being unable to reach a human after their devices were physically stolen. Not sure how that’s related to the claims in the article.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckMicrosoft/comments/1ub7i1h/micr...
But really depends. I saw somewhere NPR lost 70 years of content doe to a Cloud bill not being paid on time or something ? I forgot the details.
I am sure there will be more of this since companies are depending on the Cloud for their data storage. Now with AI, who knows what will happen. I expect Cloud Admin people will eventually be replaced by some AI type system.
Companies really should backup all data and send off-site. But that will never happen because god-forbid, they will need to hire a real person.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49285418 - "Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain over blocked access to archival data" - 229 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333344 - "Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data" - 75 comments
The cloud is a convenience at most and an expensive one. You do everything you need to do somewhere else and pray that no one else gets in or you get shot.
This is a warning to everyone else. Heed it.
Using LibreOffice does not give you web sharing, nor permission systems, nor automation workflows, nor easy to use access controls, nor so many other things.
So just start with sovereign, better governed products with clear transparent pricing and better affordability to begin with.
Data interchange formats are more important than ever, and having programs that don't do too many things is just as important.
Not everyone starts thinking about Google Docs or WebDAV to begin with, and actually ... LibreOffice does a decent job here.
https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/guide/...
Don't bring up imaginary problems on Linux that people don't have. Losing access to accounts on a computer or a cloud service due to skunky companies is totally happening today though.