Microsoft Office 2019 and Office 2021 for Mac, both sold as perpetual licenses, will drop into "reduced functionality mode" on July 13, 2026. After that date, customers who paid in full for the software can open files and view them, but cannot edit or save. The cause is a license-validation certificate scheduled to expire on that date — a date that was baked into the binary the day the software shipped.

When Office 2019 reached end of support in October 2023, Microsoft's own support page told customers the apps would "continue to function." Last week, OSnews and the Consumer Rights Wiki noticed that the page had been quietly rewritten. The continue-to-function language was gone. No email to customers. No press release. The promise was edited out before the kill switch was scheduled to flip.

The panel's argument lands on the simpler re ...