VMware makes Workstation and Fusion free for everyone

Jan

Jan

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VMware Workstation and Fusion free for all users

VMware has announced that its Workstation and Fusion hypervisor products are now available for free to commercial, educational, and personal users, effective 11 November 2024.

The announcement comes almost exactly a year after Broadcom acquired VMware in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at $69 billion (R1.2 trillion).
 
This may be interesting. They say that this is being done to gather data from a broader base. Does anyone know what personal data needs to be divulged during the signup?
 
garyc said:
This may be interesting. They say that this is being done to gather data from a broader base. Does anyone know what personal data needs to be divulged during the signup?
Click to expand...
Wild guess, maybe they want usage data to train an AI model that can navigate different Operating Systems?
There is a big push currently to have AI agents that can operate user interfaces, that could be a good way to train one.
 
Well that's weird, just downloaded it yesterday to replace Virtual box, didn't realise it used to be paid.
 
I will give it a go. Also used to using VirtualBox for many years to do things that I will not run on my main devices.
 
Interesting. Wonders if the unlicensed version would be able to connect to ESXi?

Considering the “personal use only” Type.
 
Moosedrool said:
Interesting. Wonders if the unlicensed version would be able to connect to ESXi?

Considering the “personal use only” Type.
Click to expand...

Yes, they did not cut the product, they only cut customer support.

www.vmware.com

Desktop Hypervisor Solutions | VMware

VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion desktop hypervisors are the industry leaders in local virtualization. Learn how VMware’s local virtualization solutions provide an easier way to build, test and deliver any app for any device or cloud.
www.vmware.com www.vmware.com

The above article is linked to in their blog announcement. I doubt they will change anything. The positive is, download it now, because the license is baked in.

EDIT: For clarity,

blogs.vmware.com

VMware Workstation Pro: Now Available Free for Personal Use

VMware Desktop Hypervisor products Fusion and Workstation are used by millions of people every day to run virtual machines on their Windows, Linux and Mac computers. They give users the ability to quickly and easily build “local virtual” environments to install other operating systems, learn...
blogs.vmware.com blogs.vmware.com

Are there any product differences between Free and Paid?​

The text “This product is licensed for personal use only” within the product user interface is not present when a commercial license is used. There are otherwise no functional differences.

For more information, please refer to the following KB article: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleNumber=315642
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