Broadcom says “many” VMware perpetual licenses got support extensions

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan this week publicized some concessions aimed at helping customers and partners ease into VMware's recent business model changes. Tan reiterated that the controversial changes, like the end of perpetual licensing, aren't going away. But amid questioning from antitrust officials in the European Union (EU), Tan announced that the company has already given support extensions for some VMware perpetual license holders.

Scharon Harding at Ars Technica

I'm linking to the Ars Technica writeup here, because the original blog post from Broadcom's CEO is effectively unreadable to me, as steeped in corpospeak as it is. The basic gist is that the storm of criticism that's been hovering around Broadcom ever since the changes it announced to VMware's licensing strategy isn't going away, and even attracted the attention of the European Union. As such, Broadcom is giving existing perpetual VMware license holders some breathing room, but not much, and their plans will be executed as-is regardless.

I doubt Broadcom and VMware are big and crucial enough for the full might of the EU to come down on them, so I don't think we'll see any sudden turnarounds like we did with Apple and Facebook, for instance, but at least some cracks are clearly starting to show. If the aforementioned storm keeps up, pressure from customers might actually force more concessions out of Broadcom.