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gary_0today at 2:12 PM2 repliesview on HN

They can set whatever price they want. Most customers have no choice but to pay; there is no competitor with anything approaching full compatibility or a similar feature set.

Companies like Microsoft and Adobe have maintained a business software monoculture for decades. Nobody has invested significant resources into competing products, just tiny companies and open source volunteers putting out niche alternatives. Microsoft could probably double their prices, and double the built-in advertising, and most customers would complain loudly and keep using them. Docx files, PSDs, PDF forms, etc with any complexity will only ever run properly in one corresponding proprietary application.


Replies

hypeateitoday at 2:20 PM

> They can set whatever price they want

Then why don't they? I think it's precisely because they don't want anyone "investing significant resources into competing products"

There's a line for everyone and current prices obviously aren't too much for a majority of people, including me. I just don't stay subscribed when I'm not using it.

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bcrltoday at 7:52 PM

LibreOffice is good enough for many use cases. A competing product doesn't have to be a 100% match feature for feature to be Good Enough for most users.