[blfr]

We didn't figure it out then though. I used office suits 15 years ago. They didn't work like Workspace or even m365 today. You needed to sync files by yourself, sharing and access control were rudimentary at best.

Most importantly, there was no way to support my currently bog standard workflow of making docs and notes on a computer, sharing it with colleagues in a chat with a simple link, where 2-3 people can edit it at the same time, and then checking out their changes or referring back to the notes on a phone.

Not to mention stuff like presenting a deck directly into an online meeting where participants can browse ahead or look through the slides back.

All of that is easily worth $10/seat/mo in productivity and would be very difficult to configure not as a service.

[skydhash]

> very difficult to configure not as a service.

Why would it be? I understand your point about convenience, but not the difficulty of it.

[ocdtrekkie]

A server in my house has "just done all of this" for like ten years. I had to run one command to fix it recently. It has the capacity to support dozens of users.

The idea some shared document editing is worth $10/seat/month is absolutely insane. We have built a temple to madness.

[jryle70]

So you are saying everyone who wants to share a document has to either have their own server, or log in to a server hosted by someone else?

What if that host goes down when the user needs it most, who is responsible for that? Who is doing backup or recovery? What if there is a security breach and users lost data? because Internet access is a must if the server is shared among "dozens of users".

If $10/month is insane, how much should it cost and why?

[orev]

Right, because Amazon and Microsoft never go down… Look, you had some good points, even if arguable, but the whole downtime bogeyman is just pure cloud provider marketing to drum up FUD. You might be surprised to know that many cloud providers, even the big popular ones, don’t handle backups for you.

[ocdtrekkie]

Well I spend about $5/month over the lifetime of a setup that could support like fifty users. So that's like ten cents a month. Maybe add a healthy Big Tech size profit margin, charge 50 cents a seat a month?

[cwmoore]

Is that 50c price a question or an offer? Sounds pretty good but does it interop with Drive and 360? SLA terms? Just window shopping…