VMwoe

Picture the scene

Paul Maritz makes his way to the stage at VM-World; his clothes are rent, his face is dirty with ashes and his wild and unkempt;

‘Devotees can you forgive me? I have wronged you with the new licensing scheme and you have cried out to me in pain and distress. But fear not, I heard your cries and I have relented, we have returned to the path of licensing righteousness….’

The wild-eyed acolytes cheer and cry;

‘Of course we forgive you; you are loving and caring leader, you have heard our cries! Now get off the stage and let the Killers play…..’

When the main story of a major release is the licensing model; you’ve messed up big! When it almost drowns out every new feature and enhancement….well, you’ve just become the new Oracle.

Now unlike Oracle, VMware appear to have listened to their customers but to get into this mess in the first place means that they don’t really understand their customers and not communicating with them properly in the first place.

And now it means that every major release is going to have its license scrutinised and the first question that people are going to ask is ‘How has the license changed?’

Of course that probably means that VMware are now just as evil as every other software company out there….sad really.

And I just wonder if a few major customers have taken this as an incentive to have a look round and see what other virtualisation tools there are out there. It would be nice to see the virtualisation landscape become less of a monoculture.