Free for everyone – VMware Fusion and Workstation

Homelab enthusiasts, students and commercial users, this one is good news. VMware has announced that its desktop hypervisor products, VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation, are free for everyone from now on. You read that right: these tools cost nothing any more. Whether you use them privately, while studying or in commercial projects, Fusion and Workstation are now free for you.

That makes these popular desktop products far more accessible and is excellent news for the homelab community and for anyone who wants to learn more about virtualisation. VMware had already made the Pro versions free for private users over the summer, and this goes a step further: the commercial versions are now free too. The Pro versions of Workstation and Fusion are no longer sold, though. Existing commercial contracts keep enterprise support until the contract ends, after which users have the extensive online documentation, the community forums and a knowledge base. A big win for everyone who likes these platforms.

Broadcom, VMware’s new owner, has a surprise for vSphere users as well. After a move to cloud licences that caused a fair amount of discussion, the vSphere Enterprise Plus and Standard licences are coming back as subscriptions. They were originally dropped to push the cloud offerings, which did not go down well with a lot of users. Broadcom appears to have taken the feedback on board and is bringing these licences back into the portfolio.

At soulTec we read this as a strong signal to the community, and we think opening up these tools is great. Broadcom is showing that it listens to user feedback and is actively working on its virtualisation solutions. So, homelab tinkerers and IT students: do not miss this. Try Fusion and Workstation and see what the free tools can do.