Re: TANSTAAFL!
Here's the thing: having myself "supported, consulted, and developed for a product that took a sizeable margin of its install base value every year for support and maintenance", I know that there are products that support very dynamic markets, where requirements change over the years, and where it is entirely justified that software vendors charge that maintenance to support ongoing development to keep their software up-to-date and stops it becoming obsolete.
An Office suite is NOT that type of software. But vendors supplying Office software like making more money rather than less, so when "customers ... continually ask exactly what they're paying for when the installed software isn't changing", instead of software companies saying "You're right, the software isn't changing much, we'll charge you 5% a year maintenance and support instead of 20% a year for ongoing new features", the vendors invent new, unneeded, things to justify continuing to charge 20% or more.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
