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They're very late to do this IMO, but better late than never. I am certain that VMWare has not been selling many Workstation licenses to personal users (costing

They're very late to do this IMO, but better late than never. I am certain that VMWare has not been selling many Workstation licenses to personal users (costing ~$300 each) and making the products free gives free advertising and mindshare to VMWare. Visual Studio is a good example of this, Microsoft making Visual Studio free for personal use in 2014 provided a huge boost to a platform that a lot of people had written off as dead, irrelevant, gray corporate software.

chrisandchris 2y ago
Except that VMWare is owned by Broadcom, which is known for only being interested in Fortune 500. That doesn't at all apply to Microsoft. No sane people will buy into VMWare anymore if 500k in cash is not a rounding error of your budget.
IshKebab 2y ago
> to a platform that a lot of people had written off as dead, irrelevant, gray corporate software. I don't think many people had written Visual Studio off like that in 2014. Maybe now, given VSCode. But that didn't exist in 2014.
darby_eight 2y ago
What is Visual Studio used for these days? Of course windows development, and I'm guessing xbox development too. Anything else?
- DannyWebbie 2y ago
  Primary IDE for Unity and Unreal. Microsoft has been extending beyond Microsoft platforms, so I imagine a decent chunk of Visual Studio use is for cross-platform development.
- oblio 2y ago
  I'm guessing it's still the IDE of choice of game devs.
- Kipters 2y ago
  AFAIK it's also the primary IDE for Sony and Nintendo SDKs
- TillE 2y ago
  It's probably the best C++ IDE out there, with a great debugger. For C# a lot of people prefer Rider, but in terms of free options VS is much better than VS Code.
pizza234 2y ago
> VMWare has not been selling many Workstation licenses to personal users (costing ~$300 each) and making the products free gives free advertising Not really. The VMWare Workstation Player had the same engine (but less management functionality) so personal user could actually use a VMWare virtualization product. For basic usage (including snapshotting), which fits a non-commercial user, it was a fitting choice. Therefore, it's good that they're essentially giving more functionality for free, but they did have a free offer before (for non-commercial users).

chrisandchris 2y ago

Except that VMWare is owned by Broadcom, which is known for only being interested in Fortune 500. That doesn't at all apply to Microsoft. No sane people will buy into VMWare anymore if 500k in cash is not a rounding error of your budget.

IshKebab 2y ago

> to a platform that a lot of people had written off as dead, irrelevant, gray corporate software. I don't think many people had written Visual Studio off like that in 2014. Maybe now, given VSCode. But that didn't exist in 2014.

darby_eight 2y ago

What is Visual Studio used for these days? Of course windows development, and I'm guessing xbox development too. Anything else?

DannyWebbie 2y ago
Primary IDE for Unity and Unreal. Microsoft has been extending beyond Microsoft platforms, so I imagine a decent chunk of Visual Studio use is for cross-platform development.
oblio 2y ago
I'm guessing it's still the IDE of choice of game devs.
Kipters 2y ago
AFAIK it's also the primary IDE for Sony and Nintendo SDKs
TillE 2y ago
It's probably the best C++ IDE out there, with a great debugger. For C# a lot of people prefer Rider, but in terms of free options VS is much better than VS Code.

pizza234 2y ago

> VMWare has not been selling many Workstation licenses to personal users (costing ~$300 each) and making the products free gives free advertising Not really. The VMWare Workstation Player had the same engine (but less management functionality) so personal user could actually use a VMWare virtualization product. For basic usage (including snapshotting), which fits a non-commercial user, it was a fitting choice. Therefore, it's good that they're essentially giving more functionality for free, but they did have a free offer before (for non-commercial users).