24 ms·

For anyone who doesn't know, VMware has doubled down in open source in the past 3 years, especially Kubernetes. I don't think Broadcom really understands how in

by vkat 4y ago

For anyone who doesn't know, VMware has doubled down in open source in the past 3 years, especially Kubernetes. I don't think Broadcom really understands how investment in open source works or for that matter cares. Half of my org of ~500 engineers works on upstream projects. Disclaimer: Current employee of VMware

laura2013 4y ago
I can only hope they let VMware operate independently and continue growing like they've done in the past decade.
- bobo_legos 4y ago
  One thing that I always gave Dell/EMC credit for was that they at least outwardly seemed to have left VMware free to their own thing. As opposed to a lot of their other acquisitions that they bastardized in this rush to sell enterprises on everything private cloud. We'll see Broadcom ends up taking the same route.
  - vkat 4y ago
    Quite agree, Dell/EMC treated VMware as independent.
- joedissmeyer 4y ago
  It is best to set your expectations extremely low for this type of acquisition. My personal opinion: Broadcom is _buying_ its way into the Enterprise technology space by hook or crook. When Broadcom acquires a company their M.O. is to immediately install finance-driven leadership and focus strictly on cost cutting measures coupled with accelerated profit-making endeavors. The only thing VMware employees have to look forward to in the near future are layoffs, all types of cost reductions, team consolidations (i.e. you do more work with less resources) and severely reduced R&D. And the only thing that VMware customers have to look forward to are increased VMware costs, more vendor lock-in, reduced satisfaction with support, and almost zero innovation. Again, this is just my opinion so I could end up be wrong. Or maybe I am just in a bad mood today... meh
  - sharken 4y ago
    Bad mood i hope. Should Broadcom do all those things, they run a substantial risk of degrading the products offered by VMware, which is a poor business decision. Given the very profitable state of VMware, it's a lot more likely that they will only introduce minor changes.
  - m2f2 4y ago
    Not at all. Broadcom is well known to pimp up license and maintenance prices for all their sw portfolio while cutting fat and flesh in the process. Disclaimer: forced Broadcom customer here
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    So Broadcom is just a better run IBM? IBM buys whatever product it wants for a foothold, milks it, chucks it out. It used to be Product X becomes Websphere Product X, then disappears from their salespeople's lips about 5 years later.
TomVDB 4y ago
After being acquired by Avago, Broadcom ceased to be a single company. It’s a conglomerate of entities/BUs that are explicitly asked to NOT work cooperatively, so that each entity can be sold at moment’s notice if it doesn’t deliver the right financial results anymore. Chances are that the current leadership doesn’t care about how VMware operates, as long as it cuts enough costs to increase metrics that Wall Street considers important. Expect major cuts in R&D, receptionists, travel expenses, general benefits, and virtually no hiring of college grads or interns. You’ll be on the phone in a queue for hours to get outsourced IT support. Support of open source should be the least of your worries. Stock price might go up though…
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  I was part of Symantec when we were acquired. I didn’t agree with all Broadcoms moves, but they empowered us to really cut the fact and focus on what we were good at.
  - axus 4y ago
    I was very surprised when the product quality went up, for the Symantec software I use.
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      To be fair, prior to broadcom purchase symantec was not known fo high product quality In the sysadmin world, Backup Exec and Norton products are meme's at this point, examples of the worst kind of software so I am not sure how it could have gone down in quality
      - imwillofficial 4y ago
        The consumer grade Symantec software and enterprise Symantec software were always different. Norton never had any real bearing on SEP. The consumer side of Symantec was not sold to Broadcom and became Norton Lifelock.
  - 4y ago
colechristensen 4y ago
I would be mildly interested in a 5 minute pitch of what VMware is offering these days, it's been 15 years since I've touched any of their products and the way they were doing things then really seems like it is becoming increasingly irrelevant so what have they been doing instead? It looks like my vague guess of "the same but also on top of cloud providers" seems to be about right given a quick glance at their website, but I'm curious to know a bit more.
- geodel 4y ago
  They have this VMware Tanzu platform which is like Red Hat Openshift. A heavily customized application packaging , deployment management solution on top of Kubernetes. It can be deployed on any cloud and on-prem DCs. So kinda multi cloud bet. They are selling it in a big way.
  - awild 4y ago
    They also offer tanzu as on prem cluster where you can somehow use kubernetes to provision kubernetes virtualised kubernetes clusters.
    - larntz 4y ago
      It uses cluster-api to provision clusters. It's very cool and isn't a VMware thing. It's open source, and you can easily run it on regular k8s clusters. https://cluster-api.sigs.k8s.io/ https://cluster-api.sigs.k8s.io/
      - bogomipz 4y ago
        Well, Cluster API depends on underlying providers and the VMWare provider is definitely a VMWare thing as it's maintained by them: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api-provider-vsphere https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api-provider-vsph...
      - vkat 4y ago
        Yes it is a community project but VMware engineers play a big part in maintaining as it is foundational to the kubernetes product that VMware sells. Open source does not mean it runs by itself.
hodgesrm 4y ago
VMware learned their lesson from OpenStack, where emerging upstream technology threatened their virtualization monopoly. They also were forced to go in this direction by their enterprise customers, who are very dependent themselves on open source technology. One of the opportunities at VMware is monetize the open source investment more effectively, especially Kubernetes. I still don't totally understand how they plan to do that but wish them (you) all well. Disclaimer: Former employee of VMware
- WanderPanda 4y ago
  Given the situation of Docker, it doesn’t look good for the monetization of Kubernetes, or am I missing something (I‘m not too familiar with Kubernetes)?
  - outside1234 4y ago
    The cloud vendors, that cooperatively are building Kubernetes, are making bank off of Kubernetes. Kubernetes is fine.
    - vkat 4y ago
      Multi billion dollar businesses. Just look at AWS EKS.
  - theptip 4y ago
    Given how pluggable k8s is, it should not surprise you that there are companies at every integration point. Tigera for network policy. Security policy vendors using admission controllers to secure clusters. Linkerd/Istio for service mesh. Storage vendors. Etc. Each integration point provides a hook for someone to do better than the default behavior and charge for it. The ecosystem is thriving and because the k8s platform was built to be pluggable; it is an actual platform. Docker (the company) tried to monopolize and monetize when they built Swarm, and that’s why they lost the cluster orchestrator space IMO. Docker (the tool) is just a tool, not really something you can monetize easily. Docker (the image format) is where most of the value lives, there isn’t much value to extract there as it’s an open protocol. Docker (the tool) was commoditized by k8s, and now there isn’t really any way to charge for a differentiated implementation. Providing a registry and a best-in-class Docker for Desktop experience isn’t going to be a huge TAM.
monocasa 4y ago
Did they ever stop blatantly violating the GPL in ESX? Taking driver code out of Linux and just running it inside the hypervisor has to be the most brazen violations possible.
- technothrasher 4y ago
  > Did they ever stop blatantly violating the GPL in ESX? If you mean, did they remove the vmkLinux layer from their product? Yes, they did, back in 2019 soon after they won the lawsuit on procedural grounds (the court ruled the person who brought the suit didn't have standing, and it was upheld on appeal).
  - monocasa 4y ago
    It sounds like vmklinux is deprecated but still shipping for older drivers if I'm understanding their documentation. https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2019/04/what-is-the-impact-of-the-vmklinux-driver-stack-deprecation.html https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2019/04/what-is-the-impact-... vSphere 6.7 (which they're still supporting and shipping updates to as it was only released last June), includes the vmklinux driver stack. For those reading along at home, that's a shim layer to link GPLed code into the closed source hypervisor. It's absurd that the company responsible for some of the most blatant license violations in the industry (and is still actively continuing to violate after a decade) is trying to push itself as open source friendly.
- rrdharan 4y ago
  How do you propose banning this while permitting open source drivers for Windows? I understand why you might want to, I just don’t understand what the rule would be.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    The key is in "derived from". Very few people would say NT is derived from some random drivers that nobody at Microsoft had a hand in writing. Taking existing code and having it form the foundation of a new kernel and claiming it as all closed source is quite a bit more obviously derived from that existing code open source code. "Derived from" is the core concept in the GPL; it actually doesn't use the word "link" at all. Additionally they didn't publish the source to even the GPLed drivers they shipped as binaries, before even talking about the core hypervisor itself.
worewood 4y ago
Working for a client of Broadcom, I can say that no, they don't understand how opensource works. Have a problem with one of their products which they blame on an upstream bug. They don't allocate an engineer to fix said upstream bug, supplied an workaround that didn't solve the problem just reduced number of occurrences and that's it.
magundu 4y ago
What does the upstream means?

by vkat 4y ago

laura2013 4y ago

I can only hope they let VMware operate independently and continue growing like they've done in the past decade.

bobo_legos 4y ago
One thing that I always gave Dell/EMC credit for was that they at least outwardly seemed to have left VMware free to their own thing. As opposed to a lot of their other acquisitions that they bastardized in this rush to sell enterprises on everything private cloud. We'll see Broadcom ends up taking the same route.
- vkat 4y ago
  Quite agree, Dell/EMC treated VMware as independent.
joedissmeyer 4y ago
It is best to set your expectations extremely low for this type of acquisition. My personal opinion: Broadcom is _buying_ its way into the Enterprise technology space by hook or crook. When Broadcom acquires a company their M.O. is to immediately install finance-driven leadership and focus strictly on cost cutting measures coupled with accelerated profit-making endeavors. The only thing VMware employees have to look forward to in the near future are layoffs, all types of cost reductions, team consolidations (i.e. you do more work with less resources) and severely reduced R&D. And the only thing that VMware customers have to look forward to are increased VMware costs, more vendor lock-in, reduced satisfaction with support, and almost zero innovation. Again, this is just my opinion so I could end up be wrong. Or maybe I am just in a bad mood today... meh
- sharken 4y ago
  Bad mood i hope. Should Broadcom do all those things, they run a substantial risk of degrading the products offered by VMware, which is a poor business decision. Given the very profitable state of VMware, it's a lot more likely that they will only introduce minor changes.
- m2f2 4y ago
  Not at all. Broadcom is well known to pimp up license and maintenance prices for all their sw portfolio while cutting fat and flesh in the process. Disclaimer: forced Broadcom customer here
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  So Broadcom is just a better run IBM? IBM buys whatever product it wants for a foothold, milks it, chucks it out. It used to be Product X becomes Websphere Product X, then disappears from their salespeople's lips about 5 years later.

TomVDB 4y ago

After being acquired by Avago, Broadcom ceased to be a single company. It’s a conglomerate of entities/BUs that are explicitly asked to NOT work cooperatively, so that each entity can be sold at moment’s notice if it doesn’t deliver the right financial results anymore. Chances are that the current leadership doesn’t care about how VMware operates, as long as it cuts enough costs to increase metrics that Wall Street considers important. Expect major cuts in R&D, receptionists, travel expenses, general benefits, and virtually no hiring of college grads or interns. You’ll be on the phone in a queue for hours to get outsourced IT support. Support of open source should be the least of your worries. Stock price might go up though…

imwillofficial 4y ago
I was part of Symantec when we were acquired. I didn’t agree with all Broadcoms moves, but they empowered us to really cut the fact and focus on what we were good at.
- axus 4y ago
  I was very surprised when the product quality went up, for the Symantec software I use.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    To be fair, prior to broadcom purchase symantec was not known fo high product quality In the sysadmin world, Backup Exec and Norton products are meme's at this point, examples of the worst kind of software so I am not sure how it could have gone down in quality
    - imwillofficial 4y ago
      The consumer grade Symantec software and enterprise Symantec software were always different. Norton never had any real bearing on SEP. The consumer side of Symantec was not sold to Broadcom and became Norton Lifelock.
- 4y ago

colechristensen 4y ago

I would be mildly interested in a 5 minute pitch of what VMware is offering these days, it's been 15 years since I've touched any of their products and the way they were doing things then really seems like it is becoming increasingly irrelevant so what have they been doing instead? It looks like my vague guess of "the same but also on top of cloud providers" seems to be about right given a quick glance at their website, but I'm curious to know a bit more.

geodel 4y ago
They have this VMware Tanzu platform which is like Red Hat Openshift. A heavily customized application packaging , deployment management solution on top of Kubernetes. It can be deployed on any cloud and on-prem DCs. So kinda multi cloud bet. They are selling it in a big way.
- awild 4y ago
  They also offer tanzu as on prem cluster where you can somehow use kubernetes to provision kubernetes virtualised kubernetes clusters.
  - larntz 4y ago
    It uses cluster-api to provision clusters. It's very cool and isn't a VMware thing. It's open source, and you can easily run it on regular k8s clusters. https://cluster-api.sigs.k8s.io/ https://cluster-api.sigs.k8s.io/
    - bogomipz 4y ago
      Well, Cluster API depends on underlying providers and the VMWare provider is definitely a VMWare thing as it's maintained by them: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api-provider-vsphere https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api-provider-vsph...
    - vkat 4y ago
      Yes it is a community project but VMware engineers play a big part in maintaining as it is foundational to the kubernetes product that VMware sells. Open source does not mean it runs by itself.

hodgesrm 4y ago

VMware learned their lesson from OpenStack, where emerging upstream technology threatened their virtualization monopoly. They also were forced to go in this direction by their enterprise customers, who are very dependent themselves on open source technology. One of the opportunities at VMware is monetize the open source investment more effectively, especially Kubernetes. I still don't totally understand how they plan to do that but wish them (you) all well. Disclaimer: Former employee of VMware

WanderPanda 4y ago
Given the situation of Docker, it doesn’t look good for the monetization of Kubernetes, or am I missing something (I‘m not too familiar with Kubernetes)?
- outside1234 4y ago
  The cloud vendors, that cooperatively are building Kubernetes, are making bank off of Kubernetes. Kubernetes is fine.
  - vkat 4y ago
    Multi billion dollar businesses. Just look at AWS EKS.
- theptip 4y ago
  Given how pluggable k8s is, it should not surprise you that there are companies at every integration point. Tigera for network policy. Security policy vendors using admission controllers to secure clusters. Linkerd/Istio for service mesh. Storage vendors. Etc. Each integration point provides a hook for someone to do better than the default behavior and charge for it. The ecosystem is thriving and because the k8s platform was built to be pluggable; it is an actual platform. Docker (the company) tried to monopolize and monetize when they built Swarm, and that’s why they lost the cluster orchestrator space IMO. Docker (the tool) is just a tool, not really something you can monetize easily. Docker (the image format) is where most of the value lives, there isn’t much value to extract there as it’s an open protocol. Docker (the tool) was commoditized by k8s, and now there isn’t really any way to charge for a differentiated implementation. Providing a registry and a best-in-class Docker for Desktop experience isn’t going to be a huge TAM.

monocasa 4y ago

Did they ever stop blatantly violating the GPL in ESX? Taking driver code out of Linux and just running it inside the hypervisor has to be the most brazen violations possible.

technothrasher 4y ago
> Did they ever stop blatantly violating the GPL in ESX? If you mean, did they remove the vmkLinux layer from their product? Yes, they did, back in 2019 soon after they won the lawsuit on procedural grounds (the court ruled the person who brought the suit didn't have standing, and it was upheld on appeal).
- monocasa 4y ago
  It sounds like vmklinux is deprecated but still shipping for older drivers if I'm understanding their documentation. https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2019/04/what-is-the-impact-of-the-vmklinux-driver-stack-deprecation.html https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2019/04/what-is-the-impact-... vSphere 6.7 (which they're still supporting and shipping updates to as it was only released last June), includes the vmklinux driver stack. For those reading along at home, that's a shim layer to link GPLed code into the closed source hypervisor. It's absurd that the company responsible for some of the most blatant license violations in the industry (and is still actively continuing to violate after a decade) is trying to push itself as open source friendly.
rrdharan 4y ago
How do you propose banning this while permitting open source drivers for Windows? I understand why you might want to, I just don’t understand what the rule would be.
- monocasa 4y ago
  The key is in "derived from". Very few people would say NT is derived from some random drivers that nobody at Microsoft had a hand in writing. Taking existing code and having it form the foundation of a new kernel and claiming it as all closed source is quite a bit more obviously derived from that existing code open source code. "Derived from" is the core concept in the GPL; it actually doesn't use the word "link" at all. Additionally they didn't publish the source to even the GPLed drivers they shipped as binaries, before even talking about the core hypervisor itself.

worewood 4y ago

Working for a client of Broadcom, I can say that no, they don't understand how opensource works. Have a problem with one of their products which they blame on an upstream bug. They don't allocate an engineer to fix said upstream bug, supplied an workaround that didn't solve the problem just reduced number of occurrences and that's it.

magundu 4y ago

What does the upstream means?