1mo ago

Euro cloud alliance urges action on Broadcom as Microsoft mends fences

www.theregister.com

Red lights flashing at CISPE over Broadcom licensing antics

4 comments

I don't really understand though.
Broadcom doesn't really do software outside of their hardware enablement, so they're not buying up anything resembling competition.
Virtualization is also a rather competitive market, with plenty of smaller players like proxmox and xcp-ng
The way I see it they're moving away from b2c and squeezing the shit out of Oracle and other large locked in businesses.
If you're a smaller business, your sysadmin gets a pay raise from the difference saved in licensing because they have slightly less features and automation.
Who exactly outside said smaller businesses is suffering here?
- But Broadcom does do software now, they bought VMWare in 2023, and implemented aggressive license changes. From the article:
  Broadcom's acquisition of VMware and the subsequent price hikes haven't gone down well with all customers, to the point that many have been considering alternatives. Thierry Carrez, general manager of the foundation behind one such alternative, OpenStack, told The Register: "Broadcom's handling of VMware is a good example of the risk of trusting your infrastructure software fate to a single vendor. Those companies can be bought, can change direction, can change licensing terms anytime they want."
  "Broadcom continues to tighten the screws on Europe's cloud infrastructure sector," said CISPE.
  
  If they were tied to a hardware product I understand the enshittificatiom argument but you can literally just switch to another provider. Sure the process isn't nice, but you're not that locked in. There are viable alternatives, and the market is, or at least seems healthy and competitive.