T-Mobile appears to be migrating its 303,000-core VMware environment to another platform while fighting Broadcom in court for the extended support it says its perpetual-license agreement guarantees. "The matter is somewhat urgent," The Register reports, because a court-ordered support arrangement expires August 3, "so T-Mobile may soon be unable to get support for its very substantial VMware estate." The Register reports: The dispute relates to a deal T-Mobile struck with VMware in August 2023, which saw the telco acquire perpetual licenses and two years of support for some software, plus the option for a further year of support. When Broadcom acquired VMware in 2023, it stopped selling perpetual licenses and standalone support deals for customers with those licenses. Broadcom also reduced the virtualization giant's product range from over 150 products to two subscription-only bundles. Broadcom now mostly sells its Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud suite. Customers including AT&T and Tesco tried to exercise their right to extended support, but Broadcom declined to do so. AT&T settled on confidential terms. Tesco is pursuing the matter in the courts.

When customers exercise their option for extended support, Broadcom argues it can't deliver because the products covered by the contract don't exist anymore, its contracts allow it to deny support for dead products, and subscriptions are now the industry standard. T-Mobile started using VMware's products in 2008. In one hearing, the carrier's counsel described T-Mobile's VMware implementation as "the base of the entire internal network" and "the place where 1,000 applications reside." Another filing, from Broadcom, says the telco runs VMware software on over 303,000 CPU cores.

Court documents allege that in 2024 Broadcom notified T-Mobile it would not renew support after the initial two-year deal expired in 2025. The two parties kept talking about possible new arrangements. T-Mobile also sought an injunction that would compel Broadcom to provide extended support. Broadcom opposed the injunction, arguing that T-Mobile deliberately waited too long to seek it. At one point T-Mobile suggested a $20 million deal for another two years of support. An affirmation filed last week by T-Mobile vice president of technology Kevin Luu says the carrier sought that arrangement "to be able to complete T-Mobile's transition away from VMware at a more deliberate pace."

The court eventually granted the injunction forcing Broadcom to offer support beyond August 2025, but required T-Mobile to pay $5.28 million and post a $500,000 undertaking. Broadcom continued to provide support but also sought damages on grounds that the injunction meant it missed out on a new deal with T-Mobile. The telco has rubbished that argument in part because the two parties were still talking about a new deal. Broadcom later proposed to charge $24 million for extended support covering six products, a sum it said would cover over 20 staff needed to support T-Mobile. The carrier fired back by pointing out that it has made just two support calls in 2026, which hardly justifies such a massive staff and expense.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

Tasmanian.Kris has added a photo to the pool:

Jen’s focused on the building, I’m focused on her, and the “WANTED” poster for Herzog just slips into the edge of the story whether either of us planned it or not. That’s Melbourne. Architecture, politics, and a photographer mid-shot all colliding in one frame. You don’t always choose the context, but you get to decide what to do with it.

Tasmanian.Kris has added a photo to the pool:

A row of people on a platform, each one in their own small world. The train blurs past, barely interrupting them. Public space without much interaction. Familiar, a bit lonely, very real.

Tasmanian.Kris has added a photo to the pool:

A tighter frame, one figure centred, the rest of the scene sliding past. The symmetry holds it together. There’s something calm about it, even with the movement.

Law comes into effect that critics fear will further erode rights of Uyghurs and Tibetans, as well as allow Beijing to pursue dissidents abroad

A new ethnic unity law has come into effect in China despite warnings from Taiwan, the United Nations and rights groups that it could threaten freedoms, especially for minorities.

The Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress aims to forge a “shared” national identity among ethnic groups, for example by strengthening the status of Mandarin as the official language. But overseas campaigners have argued it will further degrade the rights of ethnic minorities, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, that Beijing is accused of persecuting.

Continue reading...

They’re making an art of stealing intellectual property

• See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here

Continue reading...

In the mountains of Southwestern Switzerland , a renegade bishop, himself excommunicated by John Paul II (and de-excommunicated by former Hitler youth Pope Benedict XVI), has defied the authority of the Pope, and proceeded after multiple warnings that it would constitiute a schismatic act and lead to immediate de facto excommunication, has ordained four bishops without Papal approval.

The group of recalcitrant clerics, who call themselves the Society of Saint Pius X, claim that their doctrinal differences stem from Vatican II. Their origins, however, are much darker. They were founded by "the late French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1906-1991), an antisemitic wartime collaborationist." Born into a conservative Catholic monarchist family, when the Dreyfus affair still generated passionate anti-Jewish sentiment in France, Lefebvre entered the church in the 1920s as fascism was rising in Europe. He attended the French seminary in Rome, the rector of which was a strong supporter of the proto-fascist Charles Maurras, the founder of Action Française and coiner of the phrase l'anti-sémitisme de coeur. ___ Lefebvre spent most of the period from the 1930s to the early 1960s in colonial west Africa. Even at a distance from Europe, he enthusiastically endorsed Marshall Pétain's Vichy regime for what he termed its "Catholic order". Indeed, until his death, Lefebvre offered his support to Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front Nationale... ___ In 1989 it was revealed that for some 16 years his followers had been harbouring Paul Touvier, indicted for his central role in the deportation of the Jews of Lyons to German death camps. Touvier was finally arrested, aged 74, at the Lefebvrist St Francis Priory in Nice. So you know, Nazis. The Pope, for his part (through the official press organ of The Vatican) has stopped referring to the organization by their chosen name, instead referring to them as "Lefebvrists," a move seen by church watchers* as evidence that the Pope is considering declaring the entire sect schismatic, which would put their hundreds of thousands of followers at risk of excommunication, but most especially the tens of thousands who attended the ordination. (*Bluesky thread that starts before the schism and comments throughout.) The takeaway and TL;DR here is that Pope Bob from Chicago (who previously removed institutional sanction for the ultra right wing group Opus Dei) continues to play hardball and is taking direct, clearly anti-racist action against another persistent stronghold of the reactionary right.