I saw this... It's sad. :(

I must edit a post in my blog that I created years ago about how to download and use the free version. 

Yeah, it is too bad they killed off the Free version.  Now everyone is searching for other replacements like Proxmox amongst others which seems to be the one people are gravitating towards.

Looks like i need learn proxmox, red hat virtualization and nutanix 

This is a bit sad, I understand from a business standpoint it doesnt generate immediate revenue and takes up some support resources from time to time.  But there are a lot of benefits for doing this,  it allows people to learn using the product, and it also seeds the market a bit for smaller environments.   Its the old drug dealer method, give them a little bit and get them hooked.

Yeah...this was a known thing, although “when” was to be determined. I really don’t understand Broadcom’s logic to all their changes tbh.

When I get some free time..hopefully in the Summer, I’m going to be looking into Proxmox and/or maybe Oracle KVM.

Agreed @Cloud_dizzle 

I hope Veeam never drops the free version of VBR

Agreed!

I don’t think this will ever happen, but you never know as they say.  

I dont see us doing that.   We love our community.  

Now its time searching alternative for VMware. Hope proxmox, and nutanix will be good options. Red hat going to discontinue RHV, 

I think if Veeam can work to support Proxmox that is the direction you will see many folks move.  They already support AHV with Nutanix.

So, we’re down to Proxmox and XCP-NG.  Any other options to look at?

For free?

otherwise there are a few other options, OLVM, KVM, openshift, openstack, HCI, AHV, scale computing, virt.io and a myriad of other vendors.  
 

the real problem with all of these and where VMware shined (earlier) was the support.  Early on in VMware days there wasn’t any competition, but today there are a lot of options. The problem is support, few enterprises want a support structure for their software, open source projects while good often have little to no support outside of the community aspect.  Personal opinion is that if someone came in on top of an open source platform and had a really great support option, they would grab a lot of share. 

And Broadcom….we’ll they’re not invested in the community because VMware was an acquisition.  I feel no loyalty from them, and instead feel like they’re judging everyone based on the size of their annual spend.

Oh Yeah! 

The problem is support” - I agree whith you, @Cloud_dizzle !

Yeah I mean I am not a business person but it seems like a no brainer, beef up your support structure and attack. As for community editions, what was the cost for example of dumping Tanzu Community Edition even before Free ESX. Not dollars of course but what about all those admins who were using it to learn. Getting to like the features and gaining more and more expertise. I know for a fact that a whole swath of Kubernetes folks simply gave up on Tanzu! Done! boom! Do you think these people ever get in a position where the CEO or CTO of their company asks their opinion about what technology to choose? I do because I have been there. I have been asked what do you think Geoff?

On that note, I would love to see Veeam add support for XCP-NG and proxmox. 
I will be moving my lab/home network when I buy new hardware this year and I won’t be installing VMware.
I have used VMware since the 1.0 days and did hundreds of installs over the years.
 

I am pretty sure Veeam is looking in to Proxmox now to see where that will go.

This is me speaking personally and not on behalf of Veeam :)

proxmox still has a pretty low market share of around 1-3% with under 7k customers. It would be hard to justify the spend at this moment for the potential return.  But keeping eyes on all these potentials are what’s smart and doing some early investigations to what it would take to support when the time is right.  It will be interesting to watch this space evolve over the next year and see how the dust settles.