I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi.  It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it.  But Packt's "DevOps Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to use, and implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that it's permanently free.  But on VMware's site ( https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-7AFCC64B-7D94-48A0-86CF-8E7EF55DF68F.html ) it reads as if it's a 60 day evaluation, period.

Which brings up a few questions:

- is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at all?  (I'm currently using Proxmox.  It works, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which is more open source friendly)

- is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're on the free licensing?

- is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for anything" (point applies even though they fixed it)

Thanks.