this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
235 points (99.6% liked)
Technology
57418 readers
4597 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes. A perpetual license just means no fixed end date, not that it's irrevocable or interminable.
You can probably get away with continuing to use ESXi free licenses even commercially, you just won't have support. And at home, nothing is going to stop existing versions from working.
Incidentally, assuming I found the right license agreement: https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/downloads/eula/universal_eula.pdf
It doesn't actually say it's perpetual. It only says "The term of this EULA begins on Delivery of the Software and continues until this EULA is terminated in accordance with this Section 9", but that section only covers termination for cause or insolvency, there is no provision for termination at VMware's discretion. So, while I'm not a lawyer, it definitely sounds like you can continue using ESXi free.
Actually, reading further, I think the applicable license is this one: https://www.vmware.com/vmware-general-terms.html
But that one has even less language about license term and termination. Although it does define "perpetual license" as "a license to the Software with a perpetual term", again not irrevocable or interminable.
VMware's support was excruciating anyway. As a VCP, I learned to just figure it out on my own or work around it, they never fixed a single problem or bug I encountered.