Really vmware – Force user to receive promotion emails

Background

So I wanted to quickly spin up some machines that I can start testing various browsers and my applications compatibility. The need was very simple – install my application in a container, install java and then run it on a port and launch it in a browser

Action

So the first thing that came to mind was Vmware. I mean who doesn’t know vmware right – the company that pioneered virtualization  and gave a whole way of thinking about OS/platform as instances aka. objects of certain type – that means we should be able to spin as many as we want and should NOT necessarily be limited with the underlying hardware (of course there is more)

There are other solutions these days right – virtualbox, docker containers and so on. But anyways, I was really excited about vmware first – so I quickly search some links and find that now vmware is giving away the vmware player free – Exciting right !

To me, when a company gives its product free –  at least the features that lets users try it before starting to use – gives a good feeling to me. We can get into that debate of where the line is drawn between free – pay for license, but the point I am trying to make is — Definitely NOT like traditional microsoft (microsoft is changing to start with Windows 10 for example;)) that creates such a closed loop that users feel stuck and either end up paying or not having any other option — That is definitely not my type of software that I would invest my time as a developer.

Anyways, back to the point, excited about vmware, I go to their webiste and install the vmware player. I already have an image given by my friend and I was excited to get started as quickly as possible because I already spent enough time getting all the 10gb -ish images.

Force Promotional emails?

So installation goes on for a while and then it gets installed and then I try to open the vmware player and what do I see – The first dialog box “…blah blah…You agree to receive promotional emails from Vmware..blahblah”

How about – “NO, I DO NOT WANT TO RECEIVE promotional emails”. But unfortunately, no option to select. As a normal user, this IS BEING FORCED upon you — And if I were talking about USER EXPERIENCE at vmware, would definitely take this off. Doing targeted emails and hence trying to get emails hook or crook is NOT a great marketing strategy guys !!

So as a responsible tech developer, what do I do – Enter abc@xyz.com in the box and hit enter – because I don’t like spam in my inbox.

Think better and give freedom to end user – The more you try to corner a user and force to accept by giving no alternatives, the more the user forms opinions on the “type” of company you are – This is NOT sustainable for long run. Anyways, those are my 2 cents!

Keep the good work Vmware guys, but do pay attention to end user experience (especially when end users are mostly tech savvy these days) because that decides if product sales go on virtuous path or vicious cycle.