"Anyhow, here's the deal: as of Monday, VMware is releasing the beta version of a new product, VMware Server, which is the successor to their existing VMware GSX Server product. VMware Server will be a free product for server virtualization. This is, frankly, a market-changing move, and one that I expect a lot of people will take advantage of..."
"...VMware Server offers quite a nice list of features, including support for 64-bit operating systems in both host and guest, virtual SMP, and a remote management console. It will be available for download from http://www.vmware.com/download/VMwareServer (though that URL may not be active until Monday). With this coming out for free, I can't see why anyone would bother buying Microsoft Virtual Server - or run servers on bare metal"
[via Larkware]
The server in question is their GSX product, not the ESX one, but that's still huge. Read the CNet news on this here.
Mike is right. This is huge news. I used to use VMware before MS came out with Virtual PC. I switched mainly because of the fact that VPC came in with my MSDN Subscription. But VMware was my favorite. I'd be testing this thing out come Monday (that link is dead for now), and I really hope their workstation product will be free as well, though who knows.
It's also good news for VPC users, since the competition just grew up a notch, and MS is sure to try and beat out VMware for features/scalability etc.. It's going to be an interesting future!