Re: No
Awesome display of naiveté there. And I'm not buying this pious nonsense that you are trying to sell.
1. Do you mean to say that in the history of The Register not a single article was written to help promote an advertiser, or friend in a particular company, or to promote a specific technology for monetary or awareness gain? DevOps event anyone? Pure and unadulterated rubbish or a serious flight into fantasy land.
2. Have you ever been a product manager of a $100 million to $1 Billion, global, mission critical infrastructure product? Most everyone involved internally with what VMware did was either embarrassed and/or ashamed by changing course so quickly and screwing their customers like that. So, if any of them are ashamed, I'm going to make the safe statement that it was shameful. Mission critical infrastructure that people invest significant time, resources and sums of money to adopt is different than the reg changing their site banner and layout. If you haven't sat in the captains chair, then you are only guessing what it must be like at that scale. And I can tell you they don't make those decisions lightly because there is so much at stake - Internal R&D, Operations, marketing and sales, partners, loyal customers and the hole that they gave competitors to drive through all have to be examined and weighed. Then there is the PR side where the non-puff piece tried to paint their decision in a light that made it look like no big deal, because hey, others have done it too. If I am a cio that VMware convinced to bet my current and future infrastructure on something they said was their long term strategy, and I invest significant resources to turn my ship to align with that strategy, I don't give a rats ass about what HP did with Helion, And the comparison by the reg to minimize the severity of what is really happening here looks either somehwat naïve or covering for a key advertiser. Just sayin.