You’ll still get a few years before the software becomes remotely disabled, though. This story about Office 2019 losing functionality follows Office 2019 losing support in 2023. If that’s the rate things go, then maybe Office 2021 will lose functionality either 2 years from now (7 years after release) or 3 years from now (3 years after losing support).
Yeah, but that’s always been true of paid software licenses for a particular version: it reaches EOL and you have to decide whether to live with the possibility of unpatched known vulnerabilities or pay for an upgrade to a more recent release.
MS Office has been doing this from back in the Windows 3.0 days at least.
True. But Office for Mac uses the same installer for 365, 2021 and 2024 (and 2019 until they EOL’d
it). It’s not that they stop updating old software. They just arbitrarily decide you no longer get the updates if you’re on an older license.
You’ll still get a few years before the software becomes remotely disabled, though. This story about Office 2019 losing functionality follows Office 2019 losing support in 2023. If that’s the rate things go, then maybe Office 2021 will lose functionality either 2 years from now (7 years after release) or 3 years from now (3 years after losing support).
True, but running EOL software that doesn’t receive updates to known vulnerabilities isn’t really an option.
Yeah, but that’s always been true of paid software licenses for a particular version: it reaches EOL and you have to decide whether to live with the possibility of unpatched known vulnerabilities or pay for an upgrade to a more recent release.
MS Office has been doing this from back in the Windows 3.0 days at least.
True. But Office for Mac uses the same installer for 365, 2021 and 2024 (and 2019 until they EOL’d it). It’s not that they stop updating old software. They just arbitrarily decide you no longer get the updates if you’re on an older license.