i'm guessing it's not typical, but i have significant influence over the product and technology choices for a medium sized engineering group within a very large company.

it is my (fairly successful) mission that we ABSOLUTELY will NEVER buy or use a product that is subscription only or is not available with a perpetual license. consequently this has caused a big expansion of (preferred) open-source and other alternatives. the result of that has been nothing but savings, flexibility, and productivity. but that's just a happy, and very, very viral side effect.

we simply cannot base an engineering solution on shifting sands of the unfriendly uncaring whims of some COTS supplier. let's say i put something out that is based on vSomething BS++ edition (tm). now the company is acquired, goes out of business or does a rug pull. if it's a perpetual license, i might be version-locked, but i can survive until it can be replaced. but if it were a subscription, i might be completely screwed at the end of the term.

someday the other depts. at my very large company will take notice (and they already are). while there's a non-insignificant cost to professionally managing open-source dependencies, the silver-lining is that the costs are controlled and can be managed by you.

hyper-v was always terrible. vmWare was better. now they aren't and they are getting replaced. we're better for it.

I always associated vSphere with $$$$ and never realized there was a free version. Didn’t see how “homelab” owners were using it.

I used to use it in my home lab. Swapped to docker/k8s. I didnt have anything that required a vm.