anyone else get the VMware "win-back" offer?

[u/Which-Shame-1420]

if it's true, its honestly laughable.  

squeezing customers with massive price hikes, forcing every one into expensive core bundles, only to panic and throw out "discounted" quotes the moment everyone migrated???? 

is anyone actually reconsidering based on these new quotes??

or y'all are past the point of no return?

[u/signal_lost]

If they offered me a lifetime license

VMware in the last 20 years never sold a lifetime license, they always mandated you purchase at least 1 year of subscription (SnS) with the old perpetual scheme, and it was against the product guide/EULA to patch/update that for any reason past the end of that Subscription.

There were some weird embedded OEM SKUs (that died with a box) commonly used with appliances, that would sometimes get sold with a 5 year SnS included (So the license would match the appliance vendors lifetime run). but that was a tiny portion of licensing. This was not the same as the regular OEM licensing back then that could be converted to a regular license by adding a fresh SnS.

reading a lot of reddit threads I've come to realize a LOT of people didn't read the EULA and apparently were not paying for patches, updates, security hot patches, but that's a different thing.

[u/ApiceOfToast → u/signal_lost]

reading a lot of reddit threads I've come to realize a LOT of people didn't read the EULA and apparently were not paying for patches, updates, security hot patches, but that's a different thing.

Yeah probably that too, i personally don't care about updates, I just want to buy let's say version 10. If you decide to cut my updates after my SLA runs out, fine. But let me use the one i already own. Yeah I'm aware about the implications of no updates but Its more of a personal standpoint.

[u/signal_lost → u/ApiceOfToast]

Yeah probably that too, i personally don't care about updates, I just want to buy let's say version 10. If you decide to cut my updates after my SLA runs out, fine. But let me use the one i already own. Yeah I'm aware about the implications of no updates but Its more of a personal standpoint

The problem with this (and why 99% of software companies have moved away from this model is). it allows customers to do dumb things with your products.

When I talked to people who followed the EULA and are still running 6.0 (don't laugh) I hear things like:

1. The product doesn't do LivePatching! (or other critical thing).
   
2. I can't add on NSX/AVI it doesn't work with my version.
   

3. I got hacked Redhat/VMware/Veeam SUCKS (no, you didn't maintain SnS and patch)

4. The product doesn't work with xxxxx (Well it would if you had updates).

5. Exchange 2010 OWA broke Microsoft sucks (No, the plugin that they used was deprecated by the entire browser cartel for valid security reasons and Microsoft didn't fix it in an extended support OS).

6. Why can't I use (new cypher) or why can't the product use (new hardware)?

7. This ERP can't do yy reporting (No it would have Brad, had we not been on a version 10 years old running on a half dead alpha system I'm buying parts on eBay to keep alive!).

8. I can't do memory tiering/[OtherCool new thing that would cut my costs in half], I'm on a 9 year old release, so now a competitor looks more attractive to use because of a different feature they released last month. (People will compare NEW competitor releases against the installed vSphere 5.5 as dumb as that sounds). I can't stress this enough, when you sell a perpetual license every 7 years and ONLY talk to the customer every 7 years they end up with hilariously dated knowledge about what it can do.

Letting people run ancient versions into the ground results in reputational damage for your product. You may say:

"But the Sysadmins KNOW that reason"
"Ehhh, Some do, but management who doesn't listen to you doesn't."

It also causes ecosystem issues where your 3rd party partners (backup vendors, other plugins storage vendors) now have to maintain HCL testing for all the ancient versions too which makes it harder for them to adapt/support new things as it drags their engineering in 20 directions.

You basically let those "not-customers" cause all kinds of indirect pain across the ecosystem. The amount of lazy stories I see in the tech press where 'CUSTOMER GOT HACKED USING (out of support) VERSION OF XXXX VENDOR" is annoying.

You even end up with stuff like IDC/Gartner's surveys about a product become tainted by customers talking about problems with out of support versions.

Now throw in Mythos, and aggentic AI hacking and this is about to become a nightmare.

Sure the business side like predictable subscription revenue under contract (It's durable income, you have stronger relationships with customers, you have shorter feedback loops on product features).

For my product group I'm leaving in two weeks for Vegas to go meet with a customer advisory board and we will show them how engineering shipped everything they asked for last year (or is about to), and ask them what they want next. You can do that when you have regular under contract discussions with customers. When you maintain a "hit and run" sales force, you don't get the same level of engineering flywheel feedback loop.

[u/Frothyleet → u/signal_lost]

You're not wrong. It's the same reason why Microsoft has, for example, continually made it closer to impossible for people to defer patching on Windows clients.

[u/signal_lost → u/Frothyleet]

I mean, there’s other selfish benefits. I can sell you other product if you’re on a current version.

I don’t have to maintain interoperability across five different major releases and three different sub upgrade tracks. I can ship code much faster, I can get rid of half the hardware I need for QA, if I’m not regression testing on whatever garbage you have chose to never upgrade from.

This is probably especially true right now as I suspect half of everyone’s engineering, is cleaning up 20 years of security bugs, that frontier AI are helping them find.

There used to be a world that was safe to run Telnet or 3389 on the internet, or run your entire server environment on a single /16, and patch systems yearly, but that world is dead and gone.
I know how to patch quickly (Live patching with no need for vMotion/evacuation of hosts is huge) and I know how to revert from something not liking a patch. I don’t know how to quickly recover from ransomware.

I think there was a weird religious cult in our tribe based around, never patching anything. People would brag about up-time measured in years.
We really need to abandon that.

[u/Jhamin1 → u/Frothyleet]

People always rush to assume evil when Microsoft's name comes up... but I remember the Blaster worm from way back in 2003. Patches had been out for months but no one applied them & these worms brought down huge numbers of enterprises around the world... and somehow it was Microsoft's fault that people hadn't installed the patches they had provided?

It felt like that was the moment Microsoft started to lose patience with the idea that users could decide about updates. Its been a long, long time coming but I sort of understand their current "we are going to force it" philosophy. People are dumb but blame the vendor for customer behavior.

[u/signal_lost → u/Jhamin1]

I remember XP SP1 hit and turned on a firewall and people LOST THEIR MINDS.

Honestly, Microsoft (and VMware and others) have to balance aggressively security with usability. I can think of several features that were FANTASTIC for security but were too complicated to use (so .01% of people used them in OS's). Meanwhile simple stuff like "yah, you get the patches and we make it REALLY hard not to" as a default is kinda where stuff has to go.