I don't think we really need those quotes. Broadcom bought an existing, successful company, and immediately skyrocketed the price of their most used commercial offering.
You don't need a degree in business to surmise that short term profits will also skyrocket but you will eventually lose the market.
Yup, or that bad view of Broadcom is because of the price hikes.
I had a meeting with IT where I was worried they were finally coming after my proxmox box they "didn't know about". Turns out they saw their vmware bill and suddenly had questions.
Private equity... or Broadcom... bleed dying things dry. It's arbitrage on companies that are too slow to adopt new technology. Instead of watching something die slowly squeeze it for everything it's got by making the inflexible companies pay for their inability to change.
The end of a dead product is the same, but the financial reaper is betting they can make more money killing something quickly.
No, but Broadcom didn't buy them to build a company over time. They have a long pattern of buying a tech company, jacking up the prices, and making enough money (before customers switch) to more than make up for the purchase price of the company, netting them a tidy profit. Plus, at the end what they're left with isn't completely value-less either.
Everyone who followed Broadcom (and that included many VMWare employees) knew exactly what was coming the moment the acquisition was announced.
The biggest blocker there is probably whatever remaining creditors to the company when it goes under then have claims on remaining assets like the software.
One solution would be putting something in the tax code such that donating the code to an open source foundation gives a bigger benefit than simply writing it off as a total loss and destroying it.
Totally impossible. Closed source software often contains IP licensed from other entities. Just because a company folds doesn't mean they can violate licensing agreements.
PepsiCo had been raising the prices on their snacks, including Doritos, far faster than their costs or the rate of inflation.
They "suddenly" realized that many less people were willing to pay $7 for a bag of Doritos and that they had priced their product higher than they should have.
There's a curve, not unlike the Laffer Curve, that applies to everything you are selling; something that Broadcom is learning (though their stock has had crazy high appreciation over the last number of years!)
British Hong Kong bank HSBC Holdings plc is the common institutional shareholder pushing for adding friction to self hosting to push customers to the cloud. Avago purchased Broadcom for the same reason. Not private equity, but Chinese-British banks.
It's worth it. The increased participation and discussion have given a little momentum in usability, and AI on hand makes the learning curve very manageable. If you're already familiar with vmware, virtualization in general, it's a pretty easy transition.
I switched from VMWare to Proxmox a few years ago because Proxmox supported a wider range of network cards that were more common in the cheap desktop computers I use in my homelab, whilst VMWare almost required an Intel network card (which was usually fine for server hardware).
It was a surprisingly easy transition that I have not regretted one bit. I'm not sure whether there that was an actual migration path, without reinstalling servers from scratch. Homelab meant it didn't quite have the requirements of a production system...
Honestly? VMs are a level of complexity I haven't felt a reason to fuss around with at home for at least the past five years. Just not interested.
I'm told that Kubevirt with Kubernetes has also been a winner among customers post Broadcom acquisition who were really reluctant to go beyond VMware previously.
Proxmox can do containers too and has other benefits like really good ZFS support. I only have a couple of VMs and everything else in containers on my little Proxmox server.
Proxmox can do LXC and has some experimental support for converting Docker based images... that said, it's not the same as Docker/Podman support, which are more feature rich.
I would suggest at least a minimal Linux Server VM if you're running containers, underneath ProxMox or on a bare metal install if you don't need other virtualization on said server.
Even though VMware Fusion (the Mac version) is completely free now* and still very good, Broadcom is forcing me to move away from it to Parallels.
The reason is: No matter how I try, even as a registered user, I can't download current versions any more.
When I run VMware Fusion it tells me there's a new version, with bug fixes, support for newer macOS, and so forth. Would I like to download it?
(That's better than few months ago where it showed an error saying the URL to check for a new version was broken...)
Sure, I click, I'd like the update please. It takes me to some Broadcom page where I'm supposed to sign in or register my account and give it my personal and work details, so then I can get it for free.
I login with my account, because I've done this before. Actually it's my second account, the earlier one lost access, no clear reason.
In my account, I can see the older versions of VMware Fusion, including the one I'm already running, but the later two versions aren't showing. Even the minor-version increment from the one I'm using isn't available to me. I click around until I find where current ones should be, it shows me files in a table, I click to download, and it tells me I can't download, my account is awaiting verification. Come back in a few days.
It's been stuck like that for months now.
But wait! This is the account I used to get VMware Fusion a year ago. It worked for that. It still offers the version I'm currently using. Downloading that still works. I already had the account verified last time. Why does it require new account verification to get only a slightly different, minor-version increment version?
Last time I want through this loop trying to get the update to VMware Fusion, I ended up using Homebrew. I had a legit Broadcome/VMware account with permissions to get the file, had signed the agreement, was upgrading my existing legit install, but Broadcom's site didn't work at the timm. So I was delighted so see it in brew, with vastly better packaging and process than Broadcom's. But unfortunately the brew package is in a cat-and-mouse oscillation, being enabled and disabled every few months.
The time before that, I had to sign up with Broadcom a second time, because the first account appeared to lose its access to VMware Fusion.
The time before that, I had to sign up the first time with Broadcom, even though I already had a VMware registration previously as a paying customer of VMware Fusion.
It's been a great product, which I used to pay for and would again (it was cheaper than Parallels and perfectly capable). I've used it for over 10 years. It's free now, and it's still a great product.
Yet now I'm looking at Parallels because of ridiculous, Broadcom-shaped nonsense reasons, where they make it impossibly difficult to download their own free product.
It must be disheartening to be a developer on VMware Fusion with this going on.
I don't think we really need those quotes. Broadcom bought an existing, successful company, and immediately skyrocketed the price of their most used commercial offering.
You don't need a degree in business to surmise that short term profits will also skyrocket but you will eventually lose the market.
Yup, or that bad view of Broadcom is because of the price hikes.
I had a meeting with IT where I was worried they were finally coming after my proxmox box they "didn't know about". Turns out they saw their vmware bill and suddenly had questions.
Private equity... or Broadcom... bleed dying things dry. It's arbitrage on companies that are too slow to adopt new technology. Instead of watching something die slowly squeeze it for everything it's got by making the inflexible companies pay for their inability to change.
The end of a dead product is the same, but the financial reaper is betting they can make more money killing something quickly.
Was VMWare dying prior to the acquisition? I don't really know the financials but that wasn't the impression I had.
No, but Broadcom didn't buy them to build a company over time. They have a long pattern of buying a tech company, jacking up the prices, and making enough money (before customers switch) to more than make up for the purchase price of the company, netting them a tidy profit. Plus, at the end what they're left with isn't completely value-less either.
Everyone who followed Broadcom (and that included many VMWare employees) knew exactly what was coming the moment the acquisition was announced.
Should be a rule that when this happens and these companies fold that everything is open sourced - at least we'd all get something out of it.
The biggest blocker there is probably whatever remaining creditors to the company when it goes under then have claims on remaining assets like the software.
One solution would be putting something in the tax code such that donating the code to an open source foundation gives a bigger benefit than simply writing it off as a total loss and destroying it.
Totally impossible. Closed source software often contains IP licensed from other entities. Just because a company folds doesn't mean they can violate licensing agreements.
PepsiCo had been raising the prices on their snacks, including Doritos, far faster than their costs or the rate of inflation.
They "suddenly" realized that many less people were willing to pay $7 for a bag of Doritos and that they had priced their product higher than they should have.
There's a curve, not unlike the Laffer Curve, that applies to everything you are selling; something that Broadcom is learning (though their stock has had crazy high appreciation over the last number of years!)
>There's a curve, not unlike the Laffer Curve, that applies to everything you are selling
It's often called the Goldilocks price: not too much, not too little, but just right.
British Hong Kong bank HSBC Holdings plc is the common institutional shareholder pushing for adding friction to self hosting to push customers to the cloud. Avago purchased Broadcom for the same reason. Not private equity, but Chinese-British banks.
This sounds a bit tinfoily but given HSBCs history not impossible; can you show any additional sources to follow?
This is probably not even a rounding error in VMWare, but besides Parallels, what other desktop VM is out there w/ a native GPU driver?
What would it take to see if one can get written for UTM or something like that?
I stopped using VMware because they stopped supporting newer Linux kernels.
Lack of maintenance => lack of users.
I adore Proxmox, I'm not really sure about its support with Windows, but from a Linux server perspective, I love it.
> Other companies, including Microsoft (Hyper-V) and Proxmox, have also been aggressively courting disgruntled VMware customers.
I think I'm among the few in my peer group who hasn't yet started running Proxmox on their home server.
It's worth it. The increased participation and discussion have given a little momentum in usability, and AI on hand makes the learning curve very manageable. If you're already familiar with vmware, virtualization in general, it's a pretty easy transition.
Highly recommended.
Agreed!
I switched from VMWare to Proxmox a few years ago because Proxmox supported a wider range of network cards that were more common in the cheap desktop computers I use in my homelab, whilst VMWare almost required an Intel network card (which was usually fine for server hardware).
It was a surprisingly easy transition that I have not regretted one bit. I'm not sure whether there that was an actual migration path, without reinstalling servers from scratch. Homelab meant it didn't quite have the requirements of a production system...
Honestly? VMs are a level of complexity I haven't felt a reason to fuss around with at home for at least the past five years. Just not interested.
I'm told that Kubevirt with Kubernetes has also been a winner among customers post Broadcom acquisition who were really reluctant to go beyond VMware previously.
Proxmox can do containers too and has other benefits like really good ZFS support. I only have a couple of VMs and everything else in containers on my little Proxmox server.
Proxmox can do LXC and has some experimental support for converting Docker based images... that said, it's not the same as Docker/Podman support, which are more feature rich.
I would suggest at least a minimal Linux Server VM if you're running containers, underneath ProxMox or on a bare metal install if you don't need other virtualization on said server.
I know a lot of people who worked at VMware through the Broadcom acquisition. Hock Tan sucks.
Even though VMware Fusion (the Mac version) is completely free now* and still very good, Broadcom is forcing me to move away from it to Parallels.
The reason is: No matter how I try, even as a registered user, I can't download current versions any more.
When I run VMware Fusion it tells me there's a new version, with bug fixes, support for newer macOS, and so forth. Would I like to download it?
(That's better than few months ago where it showed an error saying the URL to check for a new version was broken...)
Sure, I click, I'd like the update please. It takes me to some Broadcom page where I'm supposed to sign in or register my account and give it my personal and work details, so then I can get it for free.
I login with my account, because I've done this before. Actually it's my second account, the earlier one lost access, no clear reason.
In my account, I can see the older versions of VMware Fusion, including the one I'm already running, but the later two versions aren't showing. Even the minor-version increment from the one I'm using isn't available to me. I click around until I find where current ones should be, it shows me files in a table, I click to download, and it tells me I can't download, my account is awaiting verification. Come back in a few days.
It's been stuck like that for months now.
But wait! This is the account I used to get VMware Fusion a year ago. It worked for that. It still offers the version I'm currently using. Downloading that still works. I already had the account verified last time. Why does it require new account verification to get only a slightly different, minor-version increment version?
Last time I want through this loop trying to get the update to VMware Fusion, I ended up using Homebrew. I had a legit Broadcome/VMware account with permissions to get the file, had signed the agreement, was upgrading my existing legit install, but Broadcom's site didn't work at the timm. So I was delighted so see it in brew, with vastly better packaging and process than Broadcom's. But unfortunately the brew package is in a cat-and-mouse oscillation, being enabled and disabled every few months.
The time before that, I had to sign up with Broadcom a second time, because the first account appeared to lose its access to VMware Fusion.
The time before that, I had to sign up the first time with Broadcom, even though I already had a VMware registration previously as a paying customer of VMware Fusion.
It's been a great product, which I used to pay for and would again (it was cheaper than Parallels and perfectly capable). I've used it for over 10 years. It's free now, and it's still a great product.
Yet now I'm looking at Parallels because of ridiculous, Broadcom-shaped nonsense reasons, where they make it impossibly difficult to download their own free product.
It must be disheartening to be a developer on VMware Fusion with this going on.