this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

You've hurt me right in the vSphere.

What a lot of people at these companies don't understand is that other options existing means people will find a way to continue without you... The more that happens, the larger the community... the faster you fail.

When Broadcom announced buying VMWare, literally all the IT subreddits in unison looked for other alternatives. We're on Proxmox now, it's been a better product than VMWare in literally every way.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

It's also called the trust thermocline. Once a certain level of exploitation is reached, customers leaving suddenly goes very quickly and usually unrecoverable. The straw that breaks the camel's back.

Or in the case of unity, you smash the poor camel with a baseball bat and are very surprised it tries to bite you.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And this is why we shouldn’t have monopolies. People shouldn’t be held hostage by one or two companies. When they go full stupid like Unity is, the customers grumble, shrug, and get to work with a different system.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or not just monopolies, but companies in general have a dictatorship authoritarian structure where the c-suite has all the decision making power and employees or customers can go fuck themselves. Corporations should be made for the people by the people.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Aligning power over systems with stackholders impacted by those systems is usually good for avoiding hostile incentives which result in hurting people, yes. Plus to some it might axiomatically be morally good.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm forced to use VMware for cisco classes.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sounds a bit odd... What networking class requires VM platform usage?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If I teach a class that needs a vm, I'm making damned sure everyone uses the same type.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The vm has "tools" preloaded and helps students experiment with configurations that don't end up causing the host computer to be badly configured. The host PCs are pretty restrictive and have no admin privileges. The VM is fully capable of being "free to mess with" in a sense. The idea behind it is to prevent unauthorized bad actions on the host pc. Creating a separation of students' abilities behind a vm. You can use your own PC, but that is cumbersome and unnecessary. The "forced to" is a bit loose, but it helps students start from a state where the teacher can help guide the students to what to do.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I remember at the time that a presentation circulated on a previous Broadcom acquisition, as a preview of what was in store for vmware. I never saw analagous material for vmware exactly, and I can't remember what Broadcom acquisition it was.

Their analysis was that they predicted their changes would kill off any new business, and kill off 80% of the existing customer base. However, this was fine as the other 20% was so stuck that they could charge more than 5x to make up for it, and all without spending any money on R&D and reducing customer support load.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While I know nothing of the numbers... This was my understanding of it as well. That they'd make probably just as much if not more money because of the captive groups.

However, while they might be captive now... Doesn't mean they'll be captive forever. VMWare is going to lose the entire market over this very rapidly, then the rest slowly after.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Indeed. However all the key people making this call will have made a few million off the husk on the way down, and will have moved on to drain the next company.