Jennifer Moore 😷"After 18 years of providing free, production-ready container images to millions of developers worldwide, Bitnami was effectively ending its free tier. ...
"Hock Tan doesn’t do interviews about his strategy. He doesn’t need to. His pattern is so consistent that VMware employees were updating their résumés before the ink dried on the $69 billion acquisition deal ...
"His formula never varies. Buy a company with sticky enterprise customers. Fire thousands of employees—VMware alone lost 2,900 employees by December 2023, according to CRN and The Register. Kill the free tiers and small-business offerings. Jack up prices by 200%, 500%, sometimes 1,000%. Then use the cash to fund the next acquisition. ...
"For two decades, developers built an incredible ecosystem based on sharing and mutual benefit. Bitnami alone grew to over 4 billion downloads annually, according to their own statistics. But that era is ending. Not with a bang, but with a pricing page.
"In its place, we’re getting a new model: enterprise software as hostage situation. Build your infrastructure on our platform. Integrate deeply. Depend completely. Then watch as we turn the screws, knowing you have no escape."
The $69 Billion Domino Effect: How VMware’s Debt-Fueled Acquisition Is Killing Open Source, One Repository at a Time
Bitnami’s decision to end its free tier by August 2025 has sparked widespread outrage among developers who rely on its services. This change is part of Broadcom CEO Hock Tan’s strategy …
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