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.
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.
I remember that happening, I think they did eventually fix that
That is so fucked up.
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!
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.
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.
I’m increasingly convinced that “The Cloud” is just a scam. Just keep your own files.
I never have and never will trust “the cloud”. If someone else is holding your data, it is no longer your data.
I pay for someone else to hold an encrypted backup of some data. The living data is in my server, they’re just one of the backups in case there’s a fire at my house or something. I pay because I expect legal liability from them to hold my data safely, no freemium shenanigans. And I encrypt because no one can be trusted not to mine my info for AI or sell my shit to a shady third party for profit.
I get a discount on OneDrive, making it the cheapest storage I can get, and it acts like this for me. Unfortunately the interface between Linux and OD leaves much to be desired.
It’s been happening as long as the internet has existed. Most of us learned this lesson earlier in life when we lost files to geocities/homestead/imgbucket going belly up
Always has been. Bait and switch etc.
But the cloud is buying up all the memory and storage
Here is a list of scenarios where it’s OK to trust Microslop:
What if there is a fire at the attractive children’s orphanage and Bill Gates offers them a new home on an island he’s developing?
Aww, did I insult a likely pedo billionaire that the folks here like?
It figures that when you say something dumb that you blame other people for it
Just learn from your mistake and move on, like an adult.
Not sure what the dumb thing would be. Seems extremely likely that Bill Gates was also part of the child raping. Melinda specifically saying his relationship with Epstein was a big part of the divorce and yet refusing to ever say she didn’t suspect him of having sexual relationships with children and instead saying people should ask those questions of him is an insanely large red flag.
What does this have to do with the comment that was replied to
Read them a few times and I’m sure you’ll manage to puzzle your way through it.
Yeah this is why no one likes you
Fortunately I’m not entered in the online popularity contest.
It figures that when you say something dumb
Not sure what the dumb thing would be.
What does this have to do with the comment that was replied to
Honestly, if you couldn’t connect those dots I couldn’t think of a way to explain it to you.
I just found out yhat you can’t trust Microsoft because they’re evil fucks! Pass the word!
I’ve been doing that for the past 35 years already.
Almost 30 years here! I went from people around me at work knowing there were alternatives to people being shocked…SHOCKED…I could “do computers” without Windows or MacOS. What a whirlwind it’s been…sigh.
Used to be able to buy PCs running Xenix, with Lotus and vi. Who really needed anything more?
Once upon a time IBM was the evil empire and Microsoft were the good guys. Remember, there’s no BM like IBM.
Sounds like a big painting brush toward profit and Microsoft had the usual shit communication and execution.
More to the point though, this is the fundamental lesson many people who say they went to business school or are IT experts are apparently now learning; if it’s not free and open source you can’t depend on it staying that way and the last 10 years has been a sprint to enshittify. Why someone in IT would base their entire storage and archive practice on the assumption a paid service or grant will remain free through grants, when there is no money to go around to pivot the org is naive at best. I see these as the same type who will rail against inequality, fascism, etc. and then be on Twitter and Facebook. The nobler aspects of man cannot coexist alongside boundless greed and fascism. Move early or be prepared to “be shocked” when structural inevitability comes.
Libre Office and countless other options are out there, just waiting to be adopted. The cells have been made very comfortable by our jailers, but the keys are right there if you want freedom.
Generally hasn’t been IT making these decisions. Same as cloud fundamentally just meaning offsite storage someone else owns. The PR push about how it somehow is not that was/is massive.
The momentum of cross functionality is also massive. There exist many programs and websites that do not accept non-microslop files.
This is so devastating to hear about. I feel for these companies, a loss like this hits so hard and can be so, so hard to recover from.
Microsoft deserves all of the shitty PR for this shit.
This should also be a gentle lesson about not leaving all of your eggs in one basket, especially if it’s a free product.
You actually need to have your own servers or actively use multiple platforms as well as backup your data. No platform is forever and some are only there at a whim. Google has a bad habit of unpredictably locking up your data too.
Clickbait title.
downvoted.How is it a clickbait title?
Instead of stating the obvious that microsoft deleted data, it’s hiding it in a mysterious “decision”. Making user click through it to find out what they actually did.
I suppose that’s fair. I’m so desensitized that this doesn’t seem as bad by comparison; but I don’t want to discourage anyone from calling it out. My educated guess from when I first read the title turned out to be right, so it didn’t register that way for me initially. But you’re right, in the end. It’s a massive problem right now, it’s hard to get away from it enough as a consumer.
It’s a hard one. Because i also dislike Microsoft for what they did and want to upvote for visibility.
Make a report. IMO all news articles should have the original title as the post title.
I’ll take The Noisy Decisions RMS and Linus Torvalds Made That Devastated Microsoft for all the marbles, Alex.
That’s the main reason why you don’t save data to one drive, unless you have at least one local backup.
And if you put anything on one drive, you better just put an encrypted backup there. No plain data.
The Quiet Decision Microsoft Quietly Made That Quietly Devastated Thousands of Quiet Nonprofits. Quietly.
Play stupid games win stupid prices
It’s hard to feel sorry for these non profits even if it the data loss is a tragedy. It’s been years of people screaming that this kind of shit could happen. That not accepting the pain of early adoption of open source software would lead to the extreme pain of being locked out arbitrarily.
Victim blaming is an ugly color on anyone.
The more I think about it the less I see them as victims, and more as irresponsible with important data.
Victim blaming is ugly when someone is actually a victim. Ignoring everyones warnings and having your data deleted by Microslop is absolutely your own fault.
It’s like still being on Facebook and being surprised that you’re more and more depressed. That person isn’t a victim of anything other than their own ignorance.
I have zero respect or empathy left for people that still rely on corporate *sswipes and their ridiculous products if alternatives are there. I mean, how can anyone be surprised by anything these psychopath corporate super-organisms do - they are literally psychopath entities that seeks destruction of others while growing themselves - no remorse. I guess these ‘non-profits’ were run by people who lived in a market-religion, went to business school, and bought ties - idiots… just a guess oc…
“Ronald Khosla, a former vegetable farmer and tech entrepreneur, keeps things simple at his nonprofit: He’s the co-founder, president, and head of IT for Canopy, a modest venture firm…”
So, he was a business c*nt, with a stupid/ignorant mindset, and a pet ‘non-profit’ project to give him a nice public image. F’ him and others like him for not understanding why tf ‘non-profit’ is here at all ! Their stupidity/ignorance and continued support for/trust in for-profit corps and that whole system, hurt everyone…
