In a move that speaks to the anxieties of a platform sensing its own erosion, VMware has quietly removed public access to a software toolkit that competitors and integrators have long used to help customers move away from its ecosystem. The company frames the restriction as a licensing clarification — migration use, it says, was never permitted — yet it watched that use flourish for years without objection. What looks like a policy correction reads, in context, as a quiet toll booth erected at the exit.