Q. What are the licensing guidelines for using VMware Player at work?

A. VMware Player is a tiny player in the greater virtualization ecosystem. Not many versions ago, VMware Player was limited to running already-existing virtual machines (VMs). It couldn't even create new ones.

That limitation has gone away in recent versions. VMware Player now includes the ability to create new VMs, but you don't get too much functionality beyond that point. As a free piece of software, VMware Player can be handy in certain administrative situations where its bigger brother VMware Workstation isn't operationally feasible or affordable.

However, even as free software, VMware Player has some licensing restrictions you should be aware of. Specifically, in section 9.1.(a) of its EULA, VMware identifies its acceptable use for VMware Player:

VMware grants you a nonexclusive, nontransferable license, without rights to sublicense, to (i) use the Software solely for your own internal information processing services and computing needs in connection with permitted uses of the Software on a single computer; (ii) use the documentation accompanying the Software. Subject to the above, each copy of the Software may not be used by any other person, whether or not such person is employed by or otherwise associated with your entity. You may not share or use concurrently the Software.

VMware Player is intended for your own personal non-commercial use only.

You can find the entire EULA contents on the VMware site.

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