Where would we be without predatory rent-seeking?
Someone’s going to make a fortune migrating firms off VMWare onto open-source VMs.
VMware perpetual license holders receive cease-and-desist letters from Broadcom
Submitted 3 weeks ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
futatorius@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Man could you imagine what proxmox would be if that project got just a tenth of the money VMware got?
Classic prisoners dilemma. Nobody wants to invest in proxmox because not enough people invest in proxmox.
4am@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Honestly I think if Proxmox got VMWare money then they’d become stuffed to the gills with business sharks and probably go the same route eventually.
That is not a Proxmox problem, that is a capitalism problem.
lowleveldata@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Proxmox is already perfect (for my use case)
Rogue@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
You should take a look at Canonical’s LXD. They’ve been investing in it pretty heavily and can definitely rival proxmox.
The web based UI is superb and I’ve never had issues with the CLI which is quite a contrast to my experience with proxmox
azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Suse has been trying pretty hard with Harvester. KVM-based, VMs-as-k8s-pods which leverages all existing k8s tooling, as well as the same multi-cluster federation as RKE2.
Seems pretty great from afar, though it’s very much under active development.
azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I know people in that predicament and they’re, charitably, helpless little babies when you tell them to read two paragraphs of documentation on how to run one command in a Linux CLI.
Fundamentally nothing out there really caters to the needs of resellers. Your average resale company couldn’t automate a backup job to save itself from bankruptcy if it doesn’t come with a neat GUI, a 24/7 support contract, and preferably a Microsoft or oracle logo somewhere in the corner to inspire confidence.
Like I jest but there are Microsoft outfits and FOSS outfits and there is essentially zero professional overlap even though they both sell IT products/solutions. The disconnect is a mile wide. Which translates to wildly different business models where the FOSS people have been running shit in containers for 15 years while the Microsoft slaves are still licensing their monolithic solutions by the CPU Core and doing weird-ass shit like buy 4-core xeons because it’s more economical with these archaic licensing models.
So sure Proxmox/Suse are certainly very happy with their sales number right now but anecdotally I’m not seeing the migration frenzy that one would expect under such intense price gouging. Broadcom correctly identified that it will take years for these super corporate structures to steer away from “the way we’ve always done things” and in the meantime that’s untold millions in additional short-term profits.
Jestzer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is another good reminder to not use VMware or VirtualBox for any reason.
Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I’m out of the loop. Why not virtualbox?
seanom@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.
Zacpod@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because Oracle sucks donkey balls.
slappypantsgo@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
I don’t understand what these folks are saying. VirtualBox is community software. It does not matter that it comes from Oracle since it is fully libre/open.
muusemuuse@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I primarily use mac and when I need to quickly spin up a linux machine, parallels needs you to buy a new version every year or they wont support much, and fusion supports everything but its…vmware
kinther@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s free and works for me, why should I stop using Virtualbox?
Jestzer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because it’s owned by Oracle and they’re the kings of malicious licensing. Using their software, even as an individual, with no intention of ever using it for work, gives them more power. Of course, if you ever even think about using it for work, then be prepared for the company you work for to be paying a huge bill or be sued.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
and what to use instead? run qemu commands and all the preparation by hand?
mp3@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Broadcom is where previously good softwares go to die.
Proxmox and Nutanix must be quite happy with the new customers.
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Proxmox ftw
themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Proxmox is amazing.
Oderus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I really want to use Nutanix but they are the same price as VMware VCF and they don’t support my existing hardware so I’d have to buy all new servers, just to pay the same price.
aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
At first, I thought the products you were listening were “good softwares going to die”. I was like “wut. Proxmox is fucking epic.”
henfredemars@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
We told them to go fuck themselves. We retain lawyer specifically in case we have legal concerns, and the way we use their products, price jack up would be so extreme that it’s entirely worth risking it while we migrate away.
WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Remember:
There’s no such thing as a perpetual license, there’s only “until we change our mind” licenses
wwb4itcgas@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
That seems unlikely to persuade those people to continue using VMware, but good luck with that business strat Broadcom.
FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Broadcom is doing an excellent job convincing their customers to stop using VMware. Such a good job that at Red Hat we’ve shifted strategies with OpenShift Virtualization to pick up those customers. For the longest time our Virt play was just a stop gap to containers, now it’s a full blown product.
wwb4itcgas@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Kudos! I wish you the best of luck and hope for your success.
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The strategy, from day-1, was to dump low-tier customers and squeeze the big dogs. They knew this wasn’t a viable long-term plan. Broadcom knew they had captive customers in the large enterprise space who would take years to migrate. They want to rape all they can, cash out and kill the product someday. But hey! As long as they can squeeze, they will do so.
I mean, fuck me, Oracle is still in business and that’s the model Broadcom is going for.
wwb4itcgas@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Yeah. Let’s not get started on fucking Oracle. We’ll be here all day. Or year, possibly.
MetalMachine@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
The not owning anything is ridiculous. We need clear regulation that makes it so companies cant do bullcrap like this. If I buy something, I own it, period.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
100% agreed.
Here’s a relevant Louis Rossmann video where a US Senator (Ron Wyden) officially asked the FTC to look into this. I sincerely hope something comes out of this.
Disaster@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
At this point, why would anyone do business with broadcom at all?
frezik@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Because they make all the cheap ethernet chips that go on motherboards.
Other than that, can’t think of a good reason.
Doctorzoidy@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
I realize there’s all sorts of Microsoft hate out there, mostly justified, but no one has mentioned hyper-v as a replacement for VMware. I’ve got a dozen or so machines running on a single VMware host and after the broadcom buyout decided to swap over, havent pulled the trigger yet as I’m using it to get a new server and wait for our support contract to end.
In the small/medium business space is proxmox a better bet?
thejag52@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
From my experience running heavily Hyper-V over the last 15 years, don’t be afraid of it, it’s worth the look. Especially for a single node like you’re talking, no reason not to in my opinion.
Matty_r@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Proxmox is definitely on its way to become a viable replacement for sure. There’s also OpenShift from Red Hat which could be worth a look at as well.
jj4211@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Openshift kind of incidentally does virtualization almost begrudgingly. Red hat started to try to be a VMware competitor with ovirt but find VMware customers too stuck in their ways, then abandoned it to chase the cloud buzz word with open stack, but open stack was never that good and also the market for people who want to make their on premise stuff act like a cloud provider is actually not that big anyway. So they hopped on the container buzzword with open shift and stuck libvirt management in there to have an excuse for virtualization customers that there is a migration path for them.
Meanwhile proxmox scratched their head wondering why everyone was fixated on stacking abstraction layer upon abstraction layer on libvirt and just directly managed the qemu. Which frankly makes their stuff a lot more straightforward technically, and their implementation is a solid realization of the sort of experience that VMware provides. In fact much more straightforward than a typical VMware deployment, and easier to care and feed since it is natively Linux instead of an OS pretending not to be an os like esxi. It also is consistent to manage, unlike VMware where you must at least interact some with esxi but that’s deliberately crippled and then you have to do things a bit differently as you deploy center (which can be weirdly convoluted).
jj4211@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’d say that if you tend to like Microsoft products, then hyper v. If you tend to be annoyed by then but like Linux, then proxmox is great. It manages to be a good blend of approachable with a GUI but also having solid API and cli that didn’t overly abstract things away from the underlying implementation
But if you aren’t really a Linux person, then I’d wager hyper v is the right direction.
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Another vote for Hyper-V.
Rugtert@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
I had a great experience with hyper-v. 2 nodes running about 60 vms for 7 years.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Hyper-V could literally suck my dick all day and I still wouldn’t use it if there’s a non-microsoft option that works. Not interested in being the test group for any more of their shit or get rug-pulled at the worst moment.
rmuk@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Yeah, if you’re used to Microsoft servers and have a Microsoft network it integrates really nicely and is great to manage. Plus, it’s free.
BritishJ@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Its not free. You need to license the base windows server. They killed the free hyper-v server offering.
AA5B@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I haven’t yet set up proxmox, but yeah, I think hyper-V would work well in a small to medium windows shop.
The negatives I found probably don’t apply
- for large installations, it never scaled as well as VMware. We saved millions on licenses when we switched, but had to buy a lot more hardware. In particular we were doing software QA where we needed many VMs but they didn’t need much resources, and hyper-v just couldn’t scale in that direction. More standard use cases probably won’t have this problem, plus this was 4 years ago so I don’t know if anything has changed
- for special case installations, hyper-v was a horrible experience on my laptop. I had the resources, but couldn’t pass through usb devices, and it kept messing up my networking.
scarilog@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m surprised I haven’t seen Nutanix mentioned at all here tbh. Direct competitor to VMware.
serenissi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Give bhyve a try. Especially on illumos host.
ThePantser@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Sounds like a them problem if their software won’t refuse to update without an active contract. If it keeps working and being able to be updated then it’s on them.
catloaf@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
That’s the thing, it doesn’t do updates. This is just to scare people into paying.
ThePantser@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The article says the letter demanded they uninstall updates to the point before their contract ended.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 3 weeks ago
This is why KVM is a good option, or even Hyper-V for Windows hosts.
NGC2346@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Proxmox is the way to go in businesses right now to replace Vmware
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 3 weeks ago
And virt-manager is pretty solid for hobbyist tinkering too.
Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Our move to XCP-ng Hypervisors with XOA has been a great experience.
one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I would argue for Apache Cloudstack personally.
rpa@europe.pub 3 weeks ago
There is a KVM equivalent on MacOS, Apple’s Hypervisor virtualization framework.
KVM is just the kernel side, you need QEMU (for example) on userland. On MacOS you have now UTM.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 3 weeks ago
I didn’t even know that was a thing. Cool!
kinther@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I stupidly bought a VMWare Workstation license when I first got on the Windows 11 train. Bright eyed and bushy tailed and all that rubbish. My experience was such shit that I abandoned it all for Linux and Virtualbox.
Fuck Microsoft, fuck VMWare.
barnaclebutt@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What would anyone use it over qemu? Is this a business enterprise thing?
nobleshift@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
NUTANIX AHV BITCHES! Download The Nutanix Bible and start learning it.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Isn’t VMWare out of support anyway?
Not that I fault the users of it - a perpetual license is a perpetual licence and good luck with the C&D, but there are other options. Though I only know of OpenShift on RHEL.
SouthFresh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Did Fraudcom hire Prenda Law or something?
the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
A move this dumb will totally work out in thier favor. /S
Gork@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Threatening to sue your customers is such a brilliant business move.
devfuuu@lemmy.world [bot] 3 weeks ago
It’s also the business model of Oracle I think and they are wildly successful.
tabular@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Who are Oracle’s customers?
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 3 weeks ago
I think it had something to do with Broadcom wanting to go for a few big customers and don’t want to deal with the small fry anymore.
MNByChoice@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Surely no competitors will grow in the small and medium business market to eventually be a competitor…
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s a valid business strategy to kick your low-paying customers to the curb and focus on the big spenders. Did the same with my little PC business back in the day. The small fry cost shitloads to support and are generally more bitchy.
But HOLY shit did Broadcom kick 'em down. I’ve never seen such an in-your-face business move to squeeze the cash cow as hard as possible, tank the company, grab the money and run.
People can say, and have been from day-1, “I’ll never use their shit again!” That’s fine with Broadcom, it’s literally their plan.
Geodad@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Right? That’s what encouraged me to sail the high seas.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
The RIAA special
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Especially those who are perfectly in the right legally and morally.