4 ms·
Nobody would use Word if the terms of service said that Microsoft will be co-owner of everything you write
by elcomet 5y ago
Nobody would use Word if the terms of service said that Microsoft will be co-owner of everything you write
- swarnie 5y agoYou have too much faith in humanity I bet a billion people getting word bundled with O365 would still use it, mostly because no one would have read page 3456 of the ToS and wouldn't know any better. Some nerd packs online would scream it from the rooftops but 98% of the population wouldn't care.
- mr_toad 5y agoBigger enterprises would have a problem, and ultimately its big enterprise that drives adoption of Microsoft products. Everyone else uses it because everyone else uses it.
- elcomet 5y agoNo company or professional user would use word if they did not own their work. Maybe people using word for non professional matters would.
- chii 5y agoif Word made writing so much easier that not using meant not being able to write at all, then they would agree to this TOS to use Word.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoAlso the degree of co-ownership matters. It might start with something small, like 1% of all royalties if > 100k USD, or a limited non-compete. Not enough to scare people off, enough to normalize the practice. Over time, the scope of co-ownership could be gradually increased, and it'll be harder to fight it off, as any pushback will be discussed in terms of particular conditions of a particular company, instead of pushing back on the whole business model.
- mdale 5y agoI look at the cloud switching costs or entrenched asymmetrical relationship of selling "software" in cloud first environment. Startups are already in this boat of growing percentage of value created allocated to the platforms of distribution or systems that the ideas runs on.