I work in a non-technical business that depends critically on MS Office, but it's not a very pernicious form of lock-in. Honestly, we could probably get by with LibreOffice or Google Docs, and with VMs or terminal servers as a backup, we could ditch Windows as our main desktop OS.

But retraining non-technical users is disruptive and expensive, not to mention retraining helpdesk staff who were hired from a massive pool of Windows experts. The ongoing support costs could massively exceed Microsoft's licensing costs, and switching would produce no benefit for us. So we're 'locked in,' but it's not really Microsoft's fault.

Things were different before their monopoly was disrupted by the web and mobile. OS pluralism is normal now, and people are more inclined to blame vendors, rather than those who opt out of the vendor's ecosystem, for compatibility problems.

What an exuberantly generous take on the relationship that exists between your company and Microsoft.

'depends critically' vs 'we could probably get by [with alternative]' - which?

> So we're 'locked in', but it's not really Microsoft's fault.

It's conceivable that some of the wealthiest people on the planet have accidentally arrived at a situation whereby myriad users are 'locked in' to a situation whereby their on-going wealth is assured.

Most enterprises depend critically on being able to view and edit Word and Excel documents. If there was some urgent need to get rid of Microsoft, they could get by with non-Microsoft applications that support the same file formats. It's easier and cheaper to stick with Microsoft because of the huge ecosystem Microsoft built. That's no accident, it was good business, aided by some questionable business practices which were noticed by antitrust regulators at the time. But it doesn't give Microsoft unlimited power – if they hike licensing fees, the available alternatives will start to look more appealing, despite the (currently) higher cost of finding staff to support them.

They’re locked in because they do license agreements for office, not because they can’t use anything else on windows. Plenty of companies use g-suite on windows.

I was also talking more about home and personal use in general, rather than businesses.

Let me tell you, technical businesses are too.

What if Microsoft was offering the best solutions to enterprise, and that's why they kept their stranglehold?

If solutions were independent of the environment, the fix would be easy: simply develop better software than Microsoft. Unfortunately Microsoft owns the stack so it's hard to compete with them on their turf. You can develop for Mac or Linux and sell to a tiny market. Or you can develop for Windows and hope Microsoft decides not to enter your market.

Without a full stack you're just a Jenga tower.

Deeper!