VMware Sues Siemens For Allegedly Using Unlicensed Software

VMware has sued industrial giant AG Siemens's US operations for alleged use of unlicensed software and accused it of changing its story negotiations. From a report: The case was filed last Friday in the US District Court for the District Delaware. VMware's complaint [PDF] alleges that Siemens AG's US operations used more VMware software that it had licensed. Siemens's use of VMware became contentious when it tried to arrange extended support for some products.

On September 9, 2024, Siemens apparently produced a list of the VMware software it used and "demanded that VMware accept a purchase order to provide maintenance and support services for the listed products." The complaint states that list mentioned VMware deployments that "far exceeded the number of licenses it [Siemens] had actually purchased."

licensing true-up

[MachineShedFred]

What, they've never heard of doing a licensing true-up, like every other enterprise software publisher?

I'm sure this isn't the result of Broadcom wanting to scam as much money out of their customers that weren't smart enough to bail at the first signs of this crap. Couldn't be!

Re: licensing true-up

[sixminuteabs]

And this happens a lot, except the part where it actually goes to court. New procurement manager wants to show how much of a swinging dick they are, share too much and end up with an even bigger bill.

Re:

[ls671]

No need to go to court usually. They then offer the customer an incredibly advantageous "deal" to regularize his situation with a 5 years contract or something like that. Oracle is renowned for doing just that and Microsoft as well to some extend.

I guess Siemens is big enough to be able to resist and can afford to go to court. We'll see if it gets solved before the judge has to issue a verdict.

Re: licensing true-up

[sixminuteabs]

Microsoft in the past I agree but itâ(TM)s hard in the age of cloud services where there is no room for an honor system.

Re:

[mysidia]

What, they've never heard of doing a licensing true-up, like every other enterprise software publisher?

Sure. The true-up is the price of Cloud Foundation subscription, As perpetual licenses are discontinued and not offered as an option for true up - Your cost is the current price of the subscription offering. Mandatory minimum term commitment: 3 Years.

Mandatory minimum license count: No less than 16 core license count units per CPU no less than 32 core license count units per server Bare minimum: 96

Re:

[GrahamJ]

That's insane. Especially given there's free software that does the same thing.

Re:

[mysidia]

Well vaguely.. there's Free software that does simple virtualization.

But trying to provide VM clustering in a shared storage environment and supporting basic features
like snapshots on your iSCSI/FC array hardware is a huge problem.

There is no free software that provides a reliable shared cluster filesystem like VMware's VMFS.

The existing Linux distributions will Not work well with your shared storage arrays.
Your basic option is Clustered LVM, and you cannot support basic virtual machine disk snapshots o

Re:

[sabbede]

Wasn't VMware free at first?

Re:

[mysidia]

Well VMware used to have two products GSX their Type 2 hypervisor and ESX their Type 1 hypervisor. They were both very expensive

Then later in the year 2006 'VMware Server' (formerly GSX) was released as a free entry-level virtualization product.
By this time ESX was standard.

A few years later around 2007 or so ESXi debuted, and ESXi 3.5 was first released. After that very release and UNTIL Broadcom acquired them, there was always a Free version of ESXi which provided the Hypervisor only and no

Re:

[sabbede]

Ugh. Thanks for clearing that up, to the extent it can be cleared up.

I find Hyper-V easier to manage anyhow.

Oracle model...

[Anonymous Coward]

VMWare under Broadcom is now using the Oracle model, basically a law firm with a software division. Complete with a maniacal Vader saying "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."

Re: Oracle model...

[sixminuteabs]

You didnâ(TM)t even read tfs did you? Title was all you needed

Lots of ways this could happen

[laughingskeptic]

- VMWare licenses were perpetual
- Siemens has acquired a number of companies over the last decade
- VMWare could be purchased with hardware pre-installed from companies like Dell

Broadcom's numbers for Siemens not matching Siemens' numbers wouldn't be that unexpected.

What makes Siemens look totally guilty is their attempt to change the list after being litigiously aggressive with Broadcom about the initial list.

Re:

[evil_aaronm]

There are also shady managers in Siemens, like anywhere else. I worked for Siemens for a while - loved it, and most of the people; I'm very proud of the product we built - but there were managers in the group that I wouldn't trust with a Sharpie, let alone a piece of software we had to license. This one guy, in particular, if I explained that we were violating the license agreement, would likely just say, "Do it anyway." Yeah, he was a dick. I don't miss him.

Re:

[mysidia]

- Siemens has acquired a number of companies over the last decade

Licenses are Not transferrable to the acquiring company without the software maker's consent, so that could be a quick way into technical non-compliance. (Which the software maker may have chosen to ignore in the past, except that the new owner of VMware does NOT want anyone continuing with perpetual licenses. Their whole business strat. is to force everyone over to a subscription with a high minimum order quantity and a several year mini

Idiocy.

[Gravis Zero]

Both companies are jerks that are on par with Oracle. Honestly, I hope VMWare wins but it's such a Pyrrhic victory that both companies will have actually lost.

Re:

[Tablizer]

Both companies are jerks...on par with Oracle.

At least God punished Siemens by letting them end up with an embarrassing name.

Now if She can just get Oracle to call themselves Scrotums.

Re: Idiocy.

[madbrain]

Oracle already stands for One rich asshole called Larry Ellison. Perhaps not as embarrassing as Scrotums.

JURY TRIAL

[Joe_Dragon]

JURY TRIAL so they need to tell an common man in away they under stand how this licensing works.

lol karma comes to roost

[proctorg76]

As unreasonable as they are around licensing of their own Step7 and TIA Portal plc programming suites this couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch. It's almost as sweet as if it happened to Oracle.

Message to potential customers

[linuxguy]

If I were a potential VMware customer, I am not, this wouldn't sit well with me. Suing your customers is always a bad idea. With their recent actions Broadcom is practically holding their customers hostage at this point. I would be very surprised if they still have a sizable size of the market left in a few years.

I run a small shop and have been using proxmox in production for years. Not a single problem. Perhaps proxmox doesn't have what the big shops need. But maybe one day.

Re:

[kaatochacha]

Especially when you're being accused of being a money grubbing backstabbing new owner, and you're trying to live down that reputation to retain customers.