I need to legally access several instances of XP Pro that are running on a VMware ESXi host server. I have read quite a bit of MS documentation as well as some of the lengthy posts about this on SW but don't know all I need to. Just curious how VMware enforces (or doesn't) its users' licenses.I have a few questions on virtualizing XP Pro. Note: I'm not condoning or encouraging piracy or disregard of rightsholders' rights at all. Or should I expect it to stop functioning at some point in the future? Is VMware just very lax about enforcing their licenses? I can actually see this being the case - I suspect the VAST majority of their revenue is from large businesses, where the risk of litigation is a huge liability, and thus the real "enforcement" of the license is fear of being sued if they're found using illigitimate copies of software, rather than built in DRM. Nothing seems to change the status of the license. I even initiated the in-app check for updates from VMware servers. But I've done everything that I can think of to get Workstation to try to phone home - I'm fully online when I enter the key. :-\ The "About" dialog says that it's fully licensed now, and doesn't mention anything about an expiration date, or warnings about trial periods etc (whereas before I entered the key, it DID mention all of those things).ĭoes VMware not actually phone home to validate the license keys a user enters? I would expect them to do some sort of activation similar to MS Windows. And it looks like it's running just fine. What's weird though is that I tried entering the key into my trial copy of Workstation anyway and.
They told me that the particular key I was given was an expired "evaluation license", which had expired way back in 2015. When I suspected it was pirated (cheaply printed DVD media, weird packaging, etc), I contacted VMware and asked them to verify the keys. I bought a copy of VMware Workstation Pro 12 from a 3rd-party seller on Amazon which turned out to be pirated.
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