Part 12 of a sourced series — the finale. Recommendations here are my opinion; the few hard facts (the EU law, where the filings live) are linked. The point of eleven parts of analysis is this one: what you can actually do.
The critique is only worth the action
Eleven parts in, you know the machine: assumptions that flatter profit, metrics that obscure, pricing that traps, licensing that tilts, financing that loops. None of it needs a villain — just a scoreboard.
You can't rewrite the scoreboard alone. But you can stop feeding it, and you can push where it actually moves. Here's how, by who you are.
If you buy software
Lock-in is a choice you make at signing, and forget by the time it hurts. Make it on purpose instead.
- Price the exit, not just the entry. Put the egress bill (Part 3) into your total cost before you sign, not after you're trapped.
- Demand portability terms. You have more leverage than you think: the EU Data Act already caps switching/egress charges at cost and bans them entirely from 12 January 2027 (European Commission). Ask for those terms even if you're not in the EU — the vendor already has to build them.
- Avoid one-way doors. Prefer open formats and standard APIs over proprietary ones wherever an equivalent exists, so leaving is an option you keep.
- Keep a tested exit plan. A migration you've never rehearsed is not a plan; it's a hope.
If you invest, or just want to read the room
You do not need a finance degree to check the moves in this series. You need the filing.
- Public companies' 10-K and 10-Q filings are free on the SEC's EDGAR.
- Search the "useful life" note (Part 1) — that's the depreciation lever, in the company's own words.
- Read the segment definitions (Part 2) — that's how "cloud revenue" gets defined and bundled.
- When a number seems too clean, find the assumption underneath it. There always is one.
If you build software
You're inside the machine. That's exactly where the fix lives.
- Publish metrics people can read. Resist the bundle that flatters the headline. Clarity is a moat competitors who obfuscate can't cross.
- Make staying earned, not enforced. Price retention on value delivered, not on the pain of leaving.
- Default to open. Exportable data and standard interfaces aren't charity; they're the trust that compounds.
If you vote, regulate, or organize
This is the strongest lever of all, because it changes the scoreboard itself.
- Interoperability and portability mandates — like the EU Data Act and the UK CMA's cloud market work (CMA) — shift the cost of lock-in back onto the vendor, where it belongs.
- Support the rules that make the trustworthy move also the profitable one. That's the whole game.
Opinion — Michael. I don't think we beat this with outrage. We beat it with attention and design. Outrage is the scoreboard's favorite fuel — it rewards the loudest villain story, not the most useful one. So do the quiet things instead: read the footnote, check the source, reward the company that makes the honest move, and build incentives you'd be proud to be followed. Systems are just choices we stopped questioning. No bad people. Bad systems. And systems can be rebuilt.
Where this leaves us
I started angry and went looking for a crime. I found a machine instead — mostly legal, fully disclosed, and far more changeable than any villain would be.
Everything in these twelve parts is checkable. So check it. The evidence explorer has every claim and every source; the videos walk you through them. Don't take my word — take the filings.
Then go fix a scoreboard. Yours, or the one you're standing on.
The series: Parts 1–12 are all sourced and open.
🔎 Explore every claim: explore every claim → · ✉️ Corrections & contact: mpolzin@zimzap.com / LinkedIn
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