Vast majority ( if not All ) of the HN reply seems to be betting against it. Let me be the usual contrarian. The message is very specific about business software, not any software ( as the headline suggest ), I actually think this isn't so bad provided the following:

You get freemium usage every month. In that case, everyone gets to use Microsoft Office for free. And that is a huge lock in if it isn't already.

You have caps, just like AWS, the cap will be cheaper than actually billing per second.

The subscription per month stays in place. Because companies like OpeX, but the usage model gives them a lot of flexibility. Especially in terms of cross selling to other software within the same company.

The only problem is I only see this being possible if the software is run on server and streamed to clients. Otherwise I dont see how they could meter it and we are just back to the old crackz or warez era.