VMware isn’t budging in its pursuit of Siemens for alleged unpaid licenses VMware has come out swinging in its case against Siemens over alleged unlicensed use of its software. The Broadcom business unit launched the case in March, when it alleged that during negotiations over a support contract Siemens provided a list of the VMware software it used. That list, Broadcom alleged, mentioned many more …
"Siemens provided a list of the VMware software it used. That list, Broadcom alleged, mentioned many more products than Siemens had licensed."
Interesting! So VMware products don't phone home to tell the mother ship about their existence?
And I wonder if Siemens is happy they provided that list, because it seems to be the trigger of lawsuit?
I don't know if it's good that my first instinct is to think that Siemens has been around long enough to know better than that- the adversarial licensing relationship goes back further than Broadcom
People shouldn't use unlicensed software but the idea you can't just talk to your vendor because they're going to use your words to shaft you somehow is no way to run a planet
"VMware will end support for version 8.0 of its products on October 11, 2027, just a few weeks after the end of the two-year period Tan mentioned. The Register often hears that organizations contemplating a move away from VMware, or reducing their use of the product, have circled that date on their calendars as a deadline for migration projects to alternative platforms."
Some of us moved off VMWare beginning within days of the announcement of the Broadcom acquisition. If you still have VMWare then you are destined for headaches and you'd better do much more than circle a date on a calendar.
I wondered this too. I am also baffled how someone can go out of compliance on Oracle. I come from the EDA industry which you don't run a command without a license. You wanted timing driven placement instead of placement, then you need the timing key. You maybe bought 4 placements and one timing driven and 2 want to use timing driven simultaneously, license denied. Flexlm is the defacto std in EDA, and flex is the operative word. Short term features, hundreds. thousands of features, node locked, floating, you name it they got it. Now maybe because VM is at the base of the pyramid VMware can't do license management, don't know. But if you can't then the license terms should be crystal clear. Like a 2 year old could understand it. And from what I've read, their terms are like oracle's baiting the trap.
We need to go back to the March report to get:
"On September 9, 2024, Siemens apparently produced a list of the VMware software it used and “demanded that VMware accept a purchase order to provide maintenance and support services for the listed products.”"
It would seem from the court submission (PDF in March article) the old VMware contract was a use what you like, but every year report on what you are using and that sets the following year's contract. Have this style of contract with GitLab (although they review things more frequently). This would seem to provide a reason why Siemens volunteerily provided Broadcom with a list of what they were using AND a purchase order for the maintenance and support of the additional products.
What we are not being told is whether Broadcom invoiced Siemens for the purchase of additional licenses being used over-and-above the existing contract and that invoice was rejected. It seems Broadcom accepted Siemens list and purchase order and provided maintenance and support for the additional licences and invoiced for that service (court submission), something they would like the court to know they only did "begrudgingly"; as if...
So it would seem Broadcom have thrown their toys out of the pram instead of simply invoicing Siemens for the additional licences for products being used, and which are for products Broadcom has made available to the Siemens via its customer support portal. What is notable in Broadcom/VMware's court submission they (quite obviously) only selectively quoted from the contract to try and make it appear Siemens had commited a heinous crime...
I suspect Siemens only really needs to produce evidence from previous annual contract reviews to show the established practise for a sensible judge to throw the case out.
To me, it sounds like Siemens produced a list of old products on a PO. Give us this.
Broadcom completely has a totally different product/part list now that doesn't include any of the old part numbers/products as it existed in the past.
They probably countered with here's what you can buy now, and Siemens is whining that the old part #s need to still exist the way they bought them 5 years ago.
I think you got it in one.
Siemens are not a little 'Mom & Pop" corner store (they are huge) and they would not make such a simple mistake.
They followed the process as per usual to renew licenses/support according to their contract and Broadcom(VMware) simply said that we do not do that anymore, you now owe us 'lots of money' under our 'new' licensing process.
This fight is because Siemens would not roll over.
The germanic point of view would be you agreed a contract and we followed the contractual requirements to the letter then you renaged on the contract we had.
As far as Siemens is concerned the issue is VMware breaking the contract.
Under German law they would be 100% in the right.
Vmware have changed the legal target to 'using more s/w than you had licenses for' because the breaking of the original contract is not an easy thing to defend. Siemens were within their contract until they were told it was no longer active/valid.
Siemens will fight this to the death and will try to fight this in the German courts as well ... they would win.
:)
When Broadcom took over they made a concerted effort to scrub all license numbers from our account that did not have an active plan. If we did not keep the documents, I could see them coming after us for the perpetual stuff.
Recently had a solicitation from a Broadcom vendor. My response: Due to the changes in product licensing, resulting in disruption of our business processes, we can no longer use the product from a vendor that we can not trust.
The entire article doesn't mention who's really in charge once: Broadcom!
They want their pound of flesh for their purchase price, and they don't care who they have to piss off and drive off long-term to get it.
If it blows up in 2 years time, the current stock price chasers will be long gone, with another couple of yachts and private jets.
> The entire article doesn't mention who's really in charge once: Broadcom!
Technically correct that Broadcom isn't mentioned once, I guess
There does seem to be a spate of these comments lately. I wonder if people are reacting to what didn't make it into the AI summary of an article
I've been wondering for a while now about the Spring Framework..
Whilst it's licence is currently Apache 2.0, I wonder if Broadcom will force a change in the licence sometime in the future
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Framework
https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-framework
Guess if they start going down that route, the original will get forked almost immediately
I have often heard the excuse that VMware has shited it's focus to large customers and therefore it has become less attractive or more expensive for smaller customers.
However this case proves it isn't focussing at all at making their large customers happy.
And now they're trying to start the case in the United States, because in other jurisdictions they have no case as their practices of abusing their position of power (customer is dependent on their product and needs years to switch to an alternative product) to increase prices exponentially is against the law.
In the Netherlands the court already ruled against them:
https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2025:11349
We have pointed this out to them and received a discount, but naturally we are already working on migrating to an alternative product.
is when we'll see clients starting to do projects to move away expecting even the largest environments to be moved within 4 months & project managers being shocked when they finally hire SMES in September 2027 that it doesn't take 2 weeks to get a DC internet line in
I know i'll get downvoted because no one here has a sense of humour and IT pros tend to REALLY bootlick the corporate Master, but watching Tesco & AT&T get a taste of their own medicine is hilarious. It's karma.
As to Siemansv using more software than they're licensed for... tell me one large enterprise that has got any control of its licensing... how many times have I heard project managers, IT managers or finance just go "install it! we'll license it in the next round"
I think the truth is much more nuanced.
VMware changed their entire licensing and pricing scheme to put customers back against the wall, which is not permitted under law. So probably VMware didn't permit them to purchase the licenses they always used, and now they claim the installations are unlicensed.
Also it took us 7 months to get a quote from them, so by the time you have clarity the contract will expire in a few weeks.
And without the laws prohibiting these practices, where is the limit on price increases? They can ask whatever they want and customers need to pay up or their company will go bankrupt?
What is then basically the difference between ransomware criminals and VMware? Both practices are illegal and the effect is just the same.
"If the practice is not illegal"
I think the issue is what country the legality test is based on.
EU and UK have different views to USA on contracts, competition and so forth. Hence as mentioned in OA vmware/Broadcom trying to keep the Siemens case within US.
Food for thought: Maximising shareholder value over a short timescale without regard to medium to long term prospects isn't really a great basis for building a new industrial sector is it?
The whole Broadcom VMware saga reads like a horror story. Pretty sure they're going to keep milking customers for a few more years but in the end people are going to drop them and any brand under the Broadcom umbrella. Really sad when the law allows companies to behave in such a Draconian manner under the guise of free market capitalism.
Sort of, if the company is very large/rich !!!
We will tend to have the same laws, more or less, due to once being in the EU.
Brexit happened but all the laws were not changed ... takes too long to agree & pass all the changes.
We have been pro-USA but Trump is teaching a very important lesson to all the world, TRUST NO-ONE !!!
:)
Escalate things! Have Siemens invite Hock over to Germany for a sitdown. Upon arrival have the German police arrest and jail Hock for extortion. No bail. Let Hock sit in jail until the case comes to trial. A year or so might make Broadcom rethink its position.
Working in manufacturing I have a lot of contact with Siemens and being kind, their IT is a bit of a shambles so I can fully believe they are running unlicensed software. And that is common in most enterprises. However its not been an issue in the past, you do a true up and pay the difference, no harm, no foul. Obviously Broadcom don't see it that way.
Anyway, one upside has been that for years Siemens wouldn't support any hypervisor except ESX. Shock, horror, they now support KVM for their products.
Not for me it isn't, says (nearly) ex VMware consultant with roughly 20 years experience.
Over those years I've been on the receiving end of so many MVP efforts that I basically had enough and bailed when Broadcom.
Windows vcentres being required and then deprecated, vcentre being a shit appliance, then the transition from Flash to the current effort. Ooh lets run two Tomcats - one to monitor and manage the other one, which is running on the same system, rather than doing a proper job in the first place. vcentres have 15 odd volumes nowadays - WTF! They are monstrous efforts.
OK so vcentre is wank, buggy and slow as fuck. But it isn't even a proper orchestration jobbie - you'll need another VM for that. Again, another sodding monster and you'll want to cluster that for scale. Oooh what about SDN? That will be twenty trillion squid, and yet more VMs and more shite to manage.
I can't be arsed with it anymore.
I'm going all in on KVM and I sort out the orchestration and management myself using off the peg open source stuff. I always go for offerings where there are two options to avoid enshitification.
You may find this hard to believe… I haven’t paid a ruddy red penny for any software of any kind in at least a decade.
(Being merely a private individual I get excellent results running Proxmox and Qemu, those are my virtualization environments. They work just fine & especially for legacy softwares, the more unsupported the better. I literally have Solaris installations I could fire up at any second I get the urge!)
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