VMware Workstation Pro, Fusion Pro: Now Available Free for Personal Use

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https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2024/05/vmware-workstation-pro-now-available-free-for-personal-use.html

..Pro Apps are now Free for Personal Use and Licensed for Commercial Use
The most exciting part is that Fusion Pro and Workstation Pro will now have two license models. We now provide a Free Personal Use or a Paid Commercial Use subscription for our Pro apps. Users will decide based on their use case whether a commercial subscription is required.

This means that everyday users who want a virtual lab on their Mac, Windows or Linux computer can do so for free simply by registering and downloading the bits from the new download portal located at support.broadcom.com..

4 users thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth, windbg, steeviebops, Mr. Austin

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Probably the only good thing to come from the Broadcom acquisition! I have a fully paid licence for the current version (17) for my own home use, but it’ll be nice not to have to pay for upgrades now.

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I agree that this announcement is good news to VMware Workstation / Fusion users, although personally I won’t benefit from this any time soon since I am staying with Workstation 15.5.2 / Fusion 11.5.3 for a long time.

Apart from this, I would agree with the poster above there is basically nothing good from the Broadcom acquisition.

As an example, if you were a previous VMware customer that bought perpetual licenses for the previous versions of the products (say old versions of Workstation and Fusion), then you might find that, like me, that the keys for them have been lost from Broadcom if you login to the Broadcom support site using your migrated VMware customer account.

Someone pointed to this document that says at the bottom :

Only license keys that have an active support contract will be brought over to Broadcom systems.

If you bought those VMware perpetual licenses in the past as a personal user (like me), most likely you won’t have an active support contract (or if you did have one it might have expired), meaning that according to the document the license keys will NOT be migrated and will be lost unless you saved it beforehand (I did). Broadcom did not warn me about this at all, not even by sending an email, and if I did not save the license keys myself I might not have access to them any more.

There is a thread on the Broadcom Community discussing this issue :
https://community.broadcom.com/discussion/entitlements-to-purchased-vmware-products-still-missing

Apparently the people discussing it were not aware of the document above, although some had been told the same thing. They considered it “unacceptable”, and I agree. Even though Broadcom may have no obligation to preserve the old product downloads and license keys, this is still a shitty move if true.

By the way, if you use VMware Workstation, your license key should be visible under “License Information” in “About VMware Workstation xx Pro” under Help. If you do not have a record of it elsewhere, please save it NOW if you think you might need it in the future.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

1 user thanked author for this post.

windbg

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Why do you need a license key for what is now a free product?

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b wrote:

Why do you need a license key for what is now a free product?

Don’t understand why?

The reason is simple : If, like me, you still need access to the older versions rather than the “newest and greatest”, now-free-to-use-personally version, as I said above :

I am staying with Workstation 15.5.2 / Fusion 11.5.3 for a long time.

This Free-for-Personal-Use offer is only for VMware Workstation Pro 17.5.2 and VMware Fusion Pro 13.5.2. The installation binaries are specifically modified to allow for this use case. Binaries for the older versions have not been modified in the same way (nor do I expect Broadcom to), so to use the older versions you will still need your old license keys.

I believe the new versions are inferior compared to what I am using now, and the new features they have are mostly geared towards Windows 11 support. I don’t need support for Windows 11 (either as host or guest) for a long time and therefore I have no reason to use the newest versions. I will stay with the versions I am using.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

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James Bond 007 wrote:

I am staying with Workstation 15.5.2 / Fusion 11.5.3 for a long time.

James Bond 007 wrote:

I have no reason to use the newest versions.

Without security fixes for the last 20 vulnerabilities released over the last four years?

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The Broadcom terms and conditions give Broadcom the right to audit users of VMWare products to look for “unpaid or unlicensed” use of the software:

Customer agrees to provide verified reports and records reasonably requested by Broadcom to verify Customer’s compliance with the Authorized Use Limitation and License Metric defined in the Transaction Document. These reporting and verification obligations remain in effect during the Term of the Broadcom Offering and for twelve (12) months thereafter. Customer agrees that, upon thirty (30) days’ prior written notice, Broadcom or an independent third party may audit Customer’s compliance with the Foundation Agreement, Software Module and the Transaction Document, remotely or at Customer’s facilities.

A similar clause existed in the VMWare EULA when they were an independent company, and it is the precise reason that I’ve always taken a pass on their free products. Some companies explicitly exclude free products from their audit clauses, but VMWare did not and Broadcom does not seem to.

Rather than subject myself to the risk of such aggravation, I have avoided using VMWare products.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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Cybertooth wrote:

The Broadcom terms and conditions give Broadcom the right to audit users of VMWare products to look for “unpaid or unlicensed” use of the software:

Customer agrees to provide verified reports and records reasonably requested by Broadcom to verify Customer’s compliance with the Authorized Use Limitation and License Metric defined in the Transaction Document. These reporting and verification obligations remain in effect during the Term of the Broadcom Offering and for twelve (12) months thereafter. Customer agrees that, upon thirty (30) days’ prior written notice, Broadcom or an independent third party may audit Customer’s compliance with the Foundation Agreement, Software Module and the Transaction Document, remotely or at Customer’s facilities.

A similar clause existed in the VMWare EULA when they were an independent company, and it is the precise reason that I’ve always taken a pass on their free products. Some companies explicitly exclude free products from their audit clauses, but VMWare did not and Broadcom does not seem to.

Rather than subject myself to the risk of such aggravation, I have avoided using VMWare products.

 

Having used VMware Workstation for close to two decades as a personal user, I have never once had VMware called me to “audit”.

Perhaps in your locality there is a bigger risk of such an audit happening to personal users. I don’t really know. But personally I won’t worry about this.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

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I been trying to download  wmware workstation v 17  for the better part of the day  today. I get to the part of the process where I am ready to download, but   broadcom.com  download  page  noted that  my  id has to be  validated.  It been in that  state all day today

Is there a way to get this state to complete?  Thanks

fpefpe

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fpefpe,

Have you checked your email for a verification link?

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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thanks  for  your reply  — the only email that I  have received so far  is  digests from the the forums — no specified  email with a token to  download the code

the  intergration of  vmware.com and broadcom.com   is like a tangled ball of string

 

fpefpe

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I appreciate that Broadcom has made wmware workstation pro free for personal use, but they have not figured easy way to have users download it. It seems that a number of people have tried but all get the same message “Account verification is Pending, Please try after some time” I waited all day yesterday. It seems that this error message was posted to the vmware forums. One user noted a week pass with no update and another noted “weeks”

I hope that Broadcom can come up with a solution to this soon or the announcement that workstation pro is free would be just moot

fpefpe

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