When the tech giant retired a popular software grant, years of nonprofit data vanished with it.
  • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
    148·
    13 days ago

    Khosla had seen Microsoft’s announcement last year that it was winding down its free nonprofit licenses beginning July 2025, but, per the record, he should have still been in the clear. He renewed Canopy’s yearly license last October, and Microsoft had emailed him to confirm he would retain access until Oct. 4, 2026. Khosla had no reason to expect anything would change, and he received no additional warnings—even as Microsoft kept in regular touch about other software updates. 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.

    In a statement emailed to Slate, Microsoft wrote that the original offers were “retired to streamline our grant offerings and simplify our grant portfolio,” adding, “We strongly advised our nonprofit customers and partners to transition to a different Microsoft 365 offer for nonprofits before their renewal date to avoid disruption and data loss.”

    As an IT person I can’t imagine just deleting customers’ data one day without keeping an archival copy. This feels like a mistake, in which case they’re being dishonest in order not to admit to their mistake. And if it wasn’t a mistake, it’s a sign that they aren’t competent at understanding their customers, making plans, or communicating. Either way, it shows Microsoft is not a company you can have confidence doing business with.

    • GreatWhiteBuffalo41@slrpnk.netEnglish
      50·
      13 days ago

      I just have a regular home license and one day my one drive was empty. The one drive I’ve pulled everything out of and after windows updates everything would be back in there again. Microsoft basically said there was nothing that could be done to recover my data. I switched to Linux that day. Like I specifically removed my files and turned off one drive in multiple occasions. And they turn it back on and move the My Documents folder back with no warning breaking folder paths for games. Such a shit company.

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      20·
      13 days ago

      Holy shit. I mean minus points for storing all your company’s data in OneDrive and just kinda trusting Microsoft, but also, holy shit is that fucked up on Microsoft’s part. Literally telling people “you’re good till your subscription ends” and then surprising them with “jk, we deleted all your data.”

      And then this asinine corpo-speak response:

      Microsoft wrote that the original offers were “retired to streamline our grant offerings and simplify our grant portfolio,” adding, “We strongly advised our nonprofit customers and partners to transition to a different Microsoft 365 offer for nonprofits before their renewal date to avoid disruption and data loss.”

      No they fucking didn’t!

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      13 days ago

      it’s a sign that they aren’t competent at understanding their customers, making plans, or communicating

      For me that was self-evident when they rolled out Windows 11.

    • purplemonkeymad@programming.devEnglish
      8·
      13 days ago

      I saw this on a few sysadmin posts, from what I saw and what people described I have a theory that it was an unexpected interaction.

      Those with the deletion had a expiration date for the donation licenses past the July '26 deadline. That shouldn’t have happened as far as I can tell from the notification email. We had some of these, but I think the difference was the presence of other licenses.

      Those with only the 10 donations and none of the other free licenses, would have become unlicensed when they were removed. There is a cool off for deletions, but if the licence had the wrong expiration, then the deadline date might have been set from the original expiration. Due to the incorrect extension that date might then have been in the past. Leading to the wrong deletions.

      I have no way to confirm any of that and ms are not going to admit it. I don’t think it was malicious, but is still a appalling show from Microsoft.

    • stuner@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      13 days ago

      I would go a bit further than that. To me, not keeping archival backups for at least a few months seems grossly negligent. To a degree where they should be legally liable for the damages. They probably have some waivers for that in their terms… but they may not hold depending on the jurisdiction.