Install Office 2016 OEM without Live account

Supporting your analysis, there was this article from the summer:

2016 08 12- Adobe Stops Software LIcense Audits in Americas, Europe

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/12/adobe\_stops\_software\_licence\_audits\_in\_americas\_europe/

… But that's not great news for Adobe users, because it means the company's move to software-as-a-service is making so much money it doesn't need to bother with audits any more.

… White's also pointed out that Microsoft retired a Software Asset Management competency for partners earlier this year, a move he believes was made possible by Redmond's cloud shifts.

Right, Rohn.  Adobe is operating like our local MTA.  They have so much money from sales taxes and EasyTag tolls, they don't even bother going after chronic tollroad cheaters.  A local TV news investigative reporter found that there were hundreds of tollroad users who owed $2-3,000 in unpaid tolls.  A former Enterprise Rent a Car manager told me that company in this market alone owed the MTA over $1.5 million in unpaid tolls.  MTA called, and some Enterprise exec just said, no that wasn't us, and that was it.  Meanwhile, MTA raised the rush hour tolls to $6.00 for a ten mile stretch, and they have over 75 employees who make over $100k a year.

Adobe has an annuity.  After two and a half years, my wife is still paying those crooks $10 a month, and for that she does nothing that I can't do on my old last-purchased-version.  Plus the new version's UI is crappy (I know, personal preference).  Anything special you want to do with Photoshop, you still have to go outside and buy something like Portrait Professional or some other third party Plug-Ins.  Yes, in short, Adobe is acting like the government.

Except that, for many of us, it makes LibreOffice with Thunderbird look more attractive than any of the three options above.

But for others of us, it's not possible to use other Office suites because our Line-Of-Business applications interface with Microsoft products.  M$ knows this and they are capitalizing on the proprietary nature of their software.

Most of my customers use Office 365 for email, which is the undisputed king of email.  There is no option that is cheaper with the same seamless syncing and functionality.  Even those who don't use 365, many use Quickbooks and expect to send out invoices from the program.  That rules out Thunderbird.

I have other clients that rely heavily on Excel macros.  I have no alternatives for them.

There needs to be an active effort to fund the open-source community.  If Windows 10 and Office 2016 -- and all of the havoc they have wrought -- haven't bumped the market share for Open Source software, then nothing will.  Why don't we all join together with a pledge that for every copy of LibreOffice of LinuxMint we install, we will contribute $40 to the project developers.  This will give incentive for the developers to build functionality that will make FOSS a good alternative to M$ products.

EITITSupport:

OP here again. Although this license-management debacle has made open-source applications more attractive to many of us, we are, practically speaking, often too heavily vested in MS inter-application code to realistically just pull the plug on MS. I do a lot of VBA programming (Access), which, in itself is not a problem because of the free Access runtime (and I do have MS to thank for that entire model).

But in several cases, I must use Access to open Excel and invoke an auto-open macro, or I must tell Outlook to send an e-mail with an attachment. Besides that, at least for me, I would be hearing "HEY!! What did you do with [some obscure feature of Excel heretofore previously unknown to me and not well-developed in LibreOffice]?" from some smarty pants immediately after I save some client many thousands of dollars by implementing LibreOffice throughout the organization. IT guys get yelled at enough as it is, so even though I whine about things here, my hope of MS paying any attention and coming up with a more small-business-friendly model for retail licensing is quickly fading.

And my complaint is not even about the retail cost. I am a bit of a "if ya wanna play, ya gotta pay" guy when it comes to using products. It just seems surreal that this entire discussion is not about price, per se, nor is it about anyone trying to avoid buying legitimate product; it is purely about registration complexities. Why pay for VLS when retail is more appropriate and affordable for small buy-as-you-go businesses? Except now the Live-based registration model--with all if its hidden pitfalls--kind of forces them toward 365 or VLS.

So, MS has either once again completely misunderstood and underestimated how large its small-business sales segment is, or this was entirely intentional. I can just imagine how that employee contest was won:

"Please submit your ideas on how to make retail office less attractive to small businesses so we can get them to buy 365 or VLS without having to actual convince them." And the winning entry was: "All we have to do is tie all retail licensing to Live accounts, put unknown limits on how many licenses can be activated on one Live account. This will not affect single-user home or office users, and eventually, any business with over about five computers will decide that Office 365 is looking pretty good--even though they hate the idea of renting sofware. And they won't even know they've been had, because they will all be busy blaming their IT contractors."

Maybe the winner got to park in Bill's spot for a month over that one.

Sigh...

EITITSupport:

And my complaint is not even about the retail cost. I am a bit of a "if ya wanna play, ya gotta pay" guy when it comes to using products. It just seems surreal that this entire discussion is not about price, per se, nor is it about anyone trying to avoid buying legitimate product; it is purely about registration complexities. Why pay for VLS when retail is more appropriate and affordable for small buy-as-you-go businesses? Except now the Live-based registration model--with all if its hidden pitfalls--kind of forces them toward 365 or VLS.

I'm in full agreement.  For me it's not about price either.  But it's clear that there in no healthy competition in the market that we can leverage to convince Microsoft to listen to their customers.  We'll buy the software no matter what they do or how much they charge.  We're all "addicts," and Microsoft is the "dealer."