Ahh, you've read the article... Where's the fun in that! :-)

My minor personal grief is that I've had perpetual licenses for vsphere 6. In the transition to broadcom account, those have completely and utterly disappeared - if you read the details of 3rd level FAQ, by design. Ah well!

Can the acquiring company even decide to dishonour the acquired company’s legal obligations?

I think lawyers will decide whether they are dishonoring obligations or not.

The real tragedy to me is the loss of access for non massive customers. Vmware was smart to build a slope of adoption, from individual techies with curiosity and home labs, to small shops with simple needs, all the way through massive governmental or multinational behemoths. That ramp-up is being dismantled. They can ride current crop of enterprise customers for a long time -- but where is next batch going to come from? Which techies in which company in 10 years,who don't already have pervasive vmware footprint, will even begin to consider it?

> Which techies in which company in 10 years,who don't already have pervasive vmware footprint, will even begin to consider it?

Quite the opposite, actually - actively try to not fall into that trap.

SiriusXM tried to weasel out of Lifetime subscription obligations and lost in a class action.

correct me if I'm wrong, but the perpetual licenses under VMware also came with the requirement that you only get patches/updates as long as you pay for a support contract, right?

"perpetual" basically meant that your license doesn't suddenly expire, not that you get free lifetime patches/updates

Agreed. But my account no longer has any mention, visibility, or indication that my perpetual licenses ever existed. No record of purchase. No ability to download. No ability to obtain and check your license.

Did you, there were people getting it days after there contract expired

You don't think it's unreasonable to sell a 'lifetime' license and then go like "haha fooled you bro, gotta pay up now"?

I'm pretty sure "lifetime license" never meant what you think it did.

It just meant that the license itself doesn't suddenly expire (and render your VMware environment useless/non-working). It didn't mean that you get lifetime free updates. That was always tied to a support contract.