I think lawyers will decide whether they are dishonoring obligations or not.
The real tragedy to me is the loss of access for non massive customers. Vmware was smart to build a slope of adoption, from individual techies with curiosity and home labs, to small shops with simple needs, all the way through massive governmental or multinational behemoths. That ramp-up is being dismantled. They can ride current crop of enterprise customers for a long time -- but where is next batch going to come from? Which techies in which company in 10 years,who don't already have pervasive vmware footprint, will even begin to consider it?
The real tragedy to me is the loss of access for non massive customers. Vmware was smart to build a slope of adoption, from individual techies with curiosity and home labs, to small shops with simple needs, all the way through massive governmental or multinational behemoths. That ramp-up is being dismantled. They can ride current crop of enterprise customers for a long time -- but where is next batch going to come from? Which techies in which company in 10 years,who don't already have pervasive vmware footprint, will even begin to consider it?