VMware Perpetual License Holders Receive Cease-And-Desist Letters From Broadcom (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0177371451
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/05/07/1856255/vmware-perpetual-license-holders-receive-cease-and-desist-letters-from-broadcom
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/broadcom-sends-cease-and-desist-letters-to-subscription-less-vmware-users/
> Broadcom has been [1]sending cease-and-desist letters to owners of VMware perpetual licenses with expired support contracts, Ars Technica has confirmed. Following its November 2023 [2]acquisition of VMware , Broadcom [3]ended VMware perpetual license sales . Users with perpetual licenses can still use the software they bought, but they are unable to renew support services unless they had a pre-existing contract enabling them to do so. The controversial move aims to push VMware users to buy subscriptions to VMware products bundled such that associated costs have increased by [4]300 percent or, in some cases, more. Some customers have opted to continue using VMware unsupported, often as they research alternatives, such as VMware rivals or devirtualization.
>
> Over the past weeks, some users running VMware unsupported have [5]reported receiving cease-and-desist letters from Broadcom informing them that their contract with VMware and, thus, their right to receive support services, has expired. The letter
[6]PDF
, reviewed by Ars Technica and signed by Broadcom managing director Michael Brown, tells users that they are to stop using any maintenance releases/updates, minor releases, major releases/upgrades extensions, enhancements, patches, bug fixes, or security patches, save for zero-day security patches, issued since their support contract ended.>
> The letter tells users that the implementation of any such updates "past the Expiration Date must be immediately removed/deinstalled," adding: "Any such use of Support past the Expiration Date constitutes a material breach of the Agreement with VMware and an infringement of VMware's intellectual property rights, potentially resulting in claims for enhanced damages and attorneys' fees." [...] The cease-and-desist letters also tell recipients that they could be subject to auditing: "Failure to comply with [post-expiration reporting] requirements may result in a breach of the Agreement by Customer[,] and VMware may exercise its right to audit Customer as well as any other available contractual or legal remedy."
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/broadcom-sends-cease-and-desist-letters-to-subscription-less-vmware-users/
[2] https://slashdot.org/story/22/05/26/1748248/broadcom-to-acquire-vmware-in-massive-61-billion-deal
[3] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/12/12/1740241/broadcom-is-killing-off-vmware-perpetual-licenses-strong-arming-users-onto-subscriptions
[4] https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/10/31/135212/300-price-hikes-push-disgruntled-vmware-customers-toward-broadcom-rivals
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1jzqbte/vmware_threatening_perpetual_license_holders_than/
[6] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/2025.05.07-12.26.01-SNAGIT-0038.pdf
Enshitification in Action (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a company going down the drain, just because some newb MBAs have decided they can increase prices to infinity, and as long as one customer remains, they come out ahead.
How can they claim that a) the support contract has expired, but b) Broadcom still has a right to audit the customer? They seem to want it both ways, and judges do not usually agree with that.
Re: (Score:3)
> This is a company going down the drain, just because some newb MBAs have decided they can increase prices to infinity, and as long as one customer remains, they come out ahead.
It's working for Broadcom at the moment: revenue for their VMWare products is up.
[1]https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/13/broadcom_q4_fy_2024_vmware/
Re: (Score:3)
Of course it's up! They raised prices and companies can't migrate their enterprise systems overnight. And while the big companies may have too many resources to migrate effectively, mid-sized companies can migrate their smaller infrastructures over more easily. It may even be best to wait until you need to order replacement hardware and then set up the replacement systems in parallel with the current system. But there's no doubt that many companies will migrate. As another poster claimed, it's all a ma
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
> This is a company going down the drain, just because some newb MBAs have decided they can increase prices to infinity, and as long as one customer remains, they come out ahead.
No, this is Broadcom.
Their entire intent in buying VMware was to eliminate it immediately.
This is what Broadcom does. They will find the acquired companies top 10 (yes TEN) customers to keep and tell everyone else to fuck off the products are no longer for sale.
VMware just had too many existing contracts for Broadcom to do this all within a single day.
Mark my words, 3 years and 1 day after the acquisition date, and unless your company already pays them more than most small countries have, Broadcom will the
Re: (Score:1)
When Oracle started pestering us for Java license fees, I wonder if they knew we were using java (openjdk) for exactly one single process on a single machine. As it happened, since we were using openjdk, we didn't owe oracle anything.
But even if hypothetically any java derivative suddenly required us to pay Oracle, I would've dropped java immediately and rewritten the app in C++ or rust or go.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not like those top 10 are getting a good deal either ... top 10 muppets.
Re: Enshitification in Action (Score:2)
It's the Computer Associates' and former FOSS enterprisey software playbook.
Re: (Score:3)
> How can they claim that a) the support contract has expired, but b) Broadcom still has a right to audit the customer? They seem to want it both ways, and judges do not usually agree with that.
I think the claim is that "You don't have a support contract with us but you are using (patched) releases of our software that were only available after your contract expired. You are not licensed to use these versions, so you must have obtained those newer versions illegally, knock it off."
I am not trying to apologize for Broadcom, and I think what they are doing to VMWare sucks, but you asked "how can they claim this?", and I think this is how.
What a great way to alienate your former customers (Score:5, Interesting)
If these companies were trying to move away from Broadcom, now they'll try even more.
Personally, except for the early VMWare years, I do not see why companies would have decided to go with WMWare for new deployments. The product is full of bugs, the APIs needlessly complex to use, and the client libraries are very poorly maintained, even more so since the acquisition.
Over 10y ago, we used their OVF 'tool' and they stopped updating it. It was not able to create OVFs for newer versions of Linux. I got into the 'tool', which was itself a Virtual Appliance. It was a bunch of shell, perl and python scripts that hardcoded XML document generation between each other. I had to patch both python and perl code so they could generate/read XML that was 'compatible' between each other. Neither code used off the shelf XML parsing/generating libraries. I guess the whole thing was put together by interns, and nobody wanted to maintain it.
VMWare, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft ... I won't miss them.
Re: What a great way to alienate your former custo (Score:2)
They got really good at optimizing the creation of badwill and discouraging sales.
Re: (Score:2)
vCenter is absurdly bloated and has been for years. It's an embarrassment.
I've moved on to Promox (KVM) and some of my cloud providers have moved to KVM, too, and nothing of value was lost.
There is no such thing as (Score:2)
Perpetual.
Re: (Score:1)
My Rolex says otherwise.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait a while
Let's Implode Our Brand (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess VMWare, by suing their customers, is trying to emulate Oracle. We'll have to see how that works out for them. I'm would be "not well", but then again, Oracle is still around, so I've been wrong before.
Re: (Score:2)
They are, but we'll never do business with them again. Not sure they care but if enough people take that stance in aggregate maybe it makes a difference long term.
What does that even mean? (Score:2)
> security patches, save for zero-day security patches
I don't even know what 0-day patch is, I understand what 0-day vulnerability is.
Do they mean you can use patches for vulnerabilities that were disclosed before your support contract ended but the patch was issued after?
Makes not sense
Re: (Score:2)
It means they will release the patch when it is available rather than sitting on it for an undetermined period of time just to be dicks about it...
Re:What does that even mean? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, it makes zero sense.
Broadcom, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to redefine the term "zero day".
"Broadcom defines a zero-day security patch as a patch or workaround for Critical Severity Security Alerts with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score greater than or equal to 9.0."
[1]https://knowledge.broadcom.com... [broadcom.com]
So for Broadcom, zero day just means "really bad".
[1] https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/314603/zero-day-ie-critical-security-patches-fo.html
Re: (Score:2)
wow, that's even dumber than Imagined. If they mean critical vulnerabilities, why not just say that. You'd still have people asking 'critical by what definition' but then you could point to CVSS, a widely accepted framework/standard, and I think most would go 'ok'.
but to just redefine zero-day, to mean something completely different that has nothing to do with time, is just mind-blowing level stupid..
Corporate Extortion (Score:2)
This sounds like extortion. "Pay us or get hacked!" Why is this not illegal? Consider the question rhetorical.
That's a great ad for Proxmox (Score:2)
RIP VMware.
Re: That's a great ad for Proxmox (Score:2)
Yup. A friend of mine helped relocate their office servers in Palo Alto once upon a time from one building to another not far away. Then once upon another time, I visited them as a Zimbra Enterprise customer wearing my business formal OluKai flip flops. :)
The ship is upside down and sinking (Score:2)
Yet her screws still turn pulling in fleeing life boats and mincing them to bits as screams and shrieks of terror fill the air.
The Old Honeypot Trick (Score:2)
Sounds like VMWare allowed customers with expired contracts to continue downloading updates and now these customers are being told to either:
1) Rollback
or 2) Become a fleeced subscriber along with the other sheep.
Which is brilliantly underhanded.
Is the rollback even realistically feasible?
Re: (Score:1)
More like "the old Promissory Estoppel trick." Broadcom neesd to fire their entire legal department and the HR people who failed to screen them at hiring time.
Reminds me of SCO (Score:5, Insightful)
Wonder if they've ever heard of an annoying little company called SCO?
Re: Reminds me of SCO (Score:2)
Oh snap. Game. Set. Match. I think they have like 5 customers left in niche uses. Everyone sane runs FreeBSD instead.
Re: (Score:2)
SCO? Sounds like a company in similar business to Oracle. Heard of them? Because they are still around. There's no guarantee that this move will kill Broadcom. ... unfortunately. We have evidence of shittier companies doing equally shitty things and thriving.
Sell it already (Score:2)
Broadcom massively overpaid and the dictate from high up is "make line go up so I don't have to admit I'm an idiot". That's all this is about, some executives trying to delay the losses, till after they can run to another company to fuck up.
Just write it down and take the loss now, while vmware is still worth something. Broadcom is poison now, simply writing it down and delivering good service is no longer an option, they need to sell it at a massive loss. Still a smaller loss than running it into the groun
They just created a perfect biz oppy (Score:2)
Migrate off VMware to XenServer or something like it with another type 1 hypervisor. Even better if it could support both arm and x86 at native speeds.
They're not the only VM solutions around (Score:2)
If Broadcom are going to be dicks to their paying customers, maybe it's time for those customers to become someone else's. It's not like there aren't a multitude of ways to host VMs. And while some VMs are critical instances, I bet a lot more aren't - ephemeral and disposable VMs - gitlab runners and whatnot. Maybe it's time for companies to take stock of why they bother using VMware at all if the company is going to be assholes. Best way to avoid surprise audits and nasty surprises is to dump the product e
Sigh. (Score:2)
Way to Oracle your way out of millions of businesses, Broadcom.
I really do hope they poke the wrong bear (Score:2)
I really do hope they poke the wrong bear and it gets challenged in court.
Not sure why they can change the terms on their own without any recourse by the customers. Curious how this plays out in different legal jurisdictions.
Avago at work, not Broadcom. (Score:3)
Avago specialised in acquiring chip companies with cash cow businesses.
When they acquired Broadcom, they took on that name. But the business model has not changed.
Extortion (Score:1)
They are not the only ones that seem to be relying on extortion. My company recently had a run in with PTC, where they claimed we were using some 15+ unlicensed seats of Creo. Problem is the site where they claim this to have happened is mostly a back office, with only one semi-retired engineer who knows how to use that software. We offered to work with them to see if there is some configuration issue causing their detection software to misflag this. Time and again their only response is that our only way o
Best to move on (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be best to completely dump this company and move on. Let Broadcom burn in the dumpster fire they have created.
Re: (Score:3)
NO, wait!
The American Bar Association totally endorses this move. Litigation is at the core of the US Economy! Broadcom is ready.
They double-dog dare you to continue to use VMWare!
This is about Customer Service and Support! Perpetual License? We were just KIDDING!! (did you hear that, Wall Street?)
There's been a lot of market consolidation (Score:4, Insightful)
So it's tough to just move on. I know they have competitors but outside of the roll your own solutions they're kind of dominant because broadcom has been buying up anyone and everyone that can compete.
You can't completely ignore antitrust law enforcement for 40 years without consequences. And we're just getting started with those.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed
Re: (Score:3)
Hyper-V isn't as good of a product as VMware, but for the cost I'll stick with it. Plus, I treat anything Broadcom buys the same way I treat anything Blackberry buys. I dump it as quickly as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Even the "free" Microsoft Hyper-V Server, based on Windows Server Core, isn't that great. You still need a Windows desktop with the Hyper-V Administrative Tools snap-in to manage it (or PowerShell).
On top of that, Microsoft still can't figure out how to get memory ballooning/oversubscription to work as well as it does in VMware or even KVM. Even VirtualBox does this perfectly. What's Microsoft's problem, anyway?
Re: (Score:2)
> You can't completely ignore antitrust law enforcement for 40 years without consequences. And we're just getting started with those.
You have a new, corrupt, government; buying [1]a seat at Trump's dinner table for $1 million [wired.com] should ensure that consequences continue to be ignored.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/people-paying-millions-donald-trump-mar-a-lago/
Honestly the real problem is moral panics (Score:2)
Political correctness, sjws, the woke mind virus, trans girls in sports, going back further you had D&D and heavy metal music and before that it was Penny dreadfuls. Those are the mass media ones there were plenty of other moral panics before that but they're a lot more esoteric by today's standards.
And of course good old-fashioned racism.
It is so easy to get people distracted. Half the country is losing their shit over immigrants instead of asking why they don't get a cut of the immigrant labor.
Re:Best to move on (Score:5, Interesting)
I have/had 122 sites running on ESXi free and using a scripted management solution that kept me from having to use vcenter. I am in the process of migrating all sites to Proxmox and so far LOVING proxmox over vmware esxi. Superior in nearly every way especially for someone using scripting to manage the locations like I do. Dropping vmware like hotcakes and will find some way to urinate and defecate on them before I drop the last one. Screw broadcom. I hope they burn to the ground.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the real issue may be that people operate private clouds without understanding what they are doing. Vendor-"strategy" this is usually called and it is obviously a complete fail.
Re: Best to move on (Score:2)
They're typical rent-seeking wheelchairs for aging enterprise bloatware. This is exactly how products die.
Re: (Score:3)
> I have/had 122 sites running on ESXi free and using a scripted management solution that kept me from having to use vcenter. I am in the process of migrating all sites to Proxmox and so far LOVING proxmox over vmware esxi. Superior in nearly every way especially for someone using scripting to manage the locations like I do.
While I like and use Proxmox as well, there are features it doesn't have that VCenter does. A prime example would be the ability to automatically power down and up nodes in a cluster as needed depending on load, as well as dynamically moving VMs around within the cluster to "even out" the load.
And yes, I agree that VMWare should be a considered a dead end product that everyone should avoid if possible, but it still has enterprise features that don't seem to be available elsewhere yet.
Re: (Score:2)
That is really the only smart tech decision here: Drop VMWare. Waiting only makes things more expensive.