[flowerbreeze]

As a user, this is great news. I think that the artificial lock-in to services that have near zero cost of on-boarding and off-boarding is not what nice companies should do.

As an entrepreneur, this is amazing news! This means users can now more easily switch to my superior service.

At least this is how I choose to see it. It seems to encourage healthy competition and I'd rather compete on the service quality and value than the cleverness of my contracts and discounts. I'm sure it will hurt the bottom line of some companies, but I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

[bilekas]

Absolutely, companies who remain stagnant will fall behind if they don't offer something as good as or better than competition. Only shareholders who are concerned about "guaranteed income" regardless of its sources will not like this imo.

[spwa4]

... of course it's the EU. It won't be enforced against large companies. I mean, it seems to me pretty obvious that this outlaws microsoft office. And yet, it's september, and ...

https://www.coolblue.nl/en/product/963184/microsoft-365-pers...

https://www.coolblue.nl/en/product/952796/adobe-photoshop-el...

Seems to me these trivially violate just about every condition talked about in this article ... yet it's still for sale with no way to cancel and get your money back. Am I missing something?

In fact this store only sells subscription software. That's the only thing available. Non-cancelable, of course. And there's plenty of technical and bundling barriers to switching.

[raincole]

> Non-cancelable, of course

Have you contacted Microsoft and they rejected your request? EU is not asking SaaS providers to implement a 'Cancel Anytime' button. EU is not banning SaaS providers from selling one-year subscription either.

> this article

You mean this AI slop. The OP's article has very little to do with what EU Data Act is.

A much better article explaining EU Data Act: https://www.twobirds.com/da/insights/2025/the-data-act-what-...

[spwa4]

That article still says that "the likely outcome is that providers will be required to refund customers for the unused portion of prepaid terms".

So can I now call Microsoft and get 75% of my Office 365 subscription back?

[bilekas]

> That article still says that "the likely outcome is that providers will be required to refund customers for the unused portion of prepaid terms".

You say it like that's a bad thing, surely that's fair actually?

[spwa4]

I expect that in the EU, this is somehow only going to apply to small EU companies. I'm sure there's technical reasons for that, that are currently thoroughly de-emphasized, difficult to find, but that will be the outcome.

This is also too little, too late, as usual in the EU. Extremely large companies have already profited incredibly of of this.

Plus, most provisions are again people, business people, refusing to pay for software. As a software engineer, I can't say I like this idea.

[raincole]

From my understanding, yes. Microsoft should give {unused portion} - {operation cost of migration} back with you if they're compliant with EU laws.

Actually, I expect they'd do that. I actually contacted Adobe support many years ago to complain about the cancel fee, and they did cancel the cancel fee for me.

[raverbashing]

Yeah the only people who would think this is bad are Adobe and companies pulling similar shenanigans