#licensing

This video examines Broadcom's controversial $61 billion acquisition of VMware in 2023, led by CEO Hock Tan. The deal followed Broadcom's established "franchise business" strategy: acquire companies with essential, deeply embedded technology, aggressively cut costs, and extract maximum revenue from customers who find it too expensive or complicated to leave.

Key impacts on VMware customers:

• Elimination of perpetual licenses: Within weeks of closing the deal, Broadcom moved customers toward subscription-based licensing, disrupting IT budgets and long-term infrastructure planning.
• Drastic price increases: Major customers, including AT&T, Fidelity, and UnitedHealthcare, reportedly faced price increases ranging from 300% to more than 1,000%.
• Forced product bundling: Broadcom consolidated more than 160 products into a handful of core bundles, requiring customers to pay for features and capabilities they may not need.
• Migration roadblocks: Changes to VMware's partner ecosystem and restrictions involving the VDDK (Virtual Disk Development Kit) reportedly made it harder for organizations to migrate virtual machines to competitors such as Nutanix or cloud providers.

Business and legal fallout:

• Several major corporations filed lawsuits against Broadcom over licensing changes, contractual disputes, and threats of service termination. Some cases resulted in confidential settlements.
• Broadcom faced widespread customer backlash and EU antitrust scrutiny, yet achieved its financial targets ahead of schedule.
• Despite the controversy, Broadcom's stock reached record highs, while VMware's operating margins improved significantly under the new ownership.

The central argument is that Broadcom doesn't necessarily need VMware customers to be happy. It needs them to stay. For many organizations, the cost, complexity, and operational risk of migrating away from VMware currently outweigh the financial pain of remaining.

Broadcom is betting that customer dependency, higher recurring subscription revenue, and future demand for AI infrastructure will continue to make VMware a highly profitable acquisition.

The question is whether customers will remain trapped indefinitely or whether Broadcom's aggressive monetization strategy will eventually drive enough organizations toward competing virtualization platforms to undermine its long-term business.

Video Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH1yGy0JSUA

Oracle’s Licensing Terms Draw the Same EU Scrutiny that Just Cost SAP Concessions
https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/oracle-orcls-licensing-terms-draw-the-same-eu-scrutiny-that-just-cost-sap-concessions-1834238/

"Business as usual" is going to cost them! EU customers will get some relief.

There is no actual reason that software development cannot be unionized and standardized. You could have real licensing exams to become a software developer. There is no real functional reason that this stack is better than that stack. A single stack could be standardized. Thus you could license this entire field. Licensed jobs provide more job security.

As for unionizing software development. Well the gaming industry is already doing so. If you think what we do here is more complicated than game development. Go make a video game. It’s high time software developers form a union. We are the perfect group for such a thing. We are not understood by our leadership. They do not listen to what we say. They do not allow us to make the system sturdy. Our stakeholders and purse strings holders do not respect us. We run, operate, and build on top of all the systems that run the company. Basically we are not allowed to actually practice our practice. Thus the only option is, we protect our practice through a union. Otherwise we let leadership continue to make cuts to software development headcount, and outsource or not. Then VZ’s systems just collapse. They’re already held together with sp-t and glue. The only way that VZ survives is if software developers are allowed to have a backbone and shape the companies systems. The only way that happens is if software developers collectively bargain against management.

Time and time again VZ has elected to cut doers and keep sayers. If you want this company to win. You have to organize the win. Period. No one is coming to save you.

So here’s what it is. Try to turn tech into a revenue generator by laying off a ton of people and licensing our technology with the new dept she created. Sorry folks that’s all you get when you pay someone $20 million a year. For $25 million you could have gotten a college graduate who learned AI by studying not by watching you tube. It’s Epic dude.