

I don’t really understand though.
Broadcom doesn’t really do software outside of their hardware enablement, so they’re not buying up anything resembling competition.
Virtualization is also a rather competitive market, with plenty of smaller players like proxmox and xcp-ng
The way I see it they’re moving away from b2c and squeezing the shit out of Oracle and other large locked in businesses.
If you’re a smaller business, your sysadmin gets a pay raise from the difference saved in licensing because they have slightly less features and automation.
Who exactly outside said smaller businesses is suffering here?

If they were tied to a hardware product I understand the enshittificatiom argument but you can literally just switch to another provider. Sure the process isn’t nice, but you’re not that locked in. There are viable alternatives, and the market is, or at least seems healthy and competitive.