It explicitly encourages you to circumvent it so you can run it for more than 90 days.

Edit: To be clear, this part:

These virtual machines expire after 90 days. We recommend setting a snapshot when you first install the virtual machine which you can roll back to later.

If you set a snapshot and roll back to it later, you get another 90 days. Rinse and repeat.

Using snapshots to roll back and lose 89 days of work/system changes is quite an inconvenience though. Circumventing the need for snapshots/rollbacks is still not ok

Well, the need to take a snapshot--or rather, the activation issue--is described at one point in the license as a "bug". It's a little confusing, but from talking to the maintainer of the VMs on GitHub, it sounds as though they just don't want to dedicate time to "fixing" the activation system. The workaround is to take snapshots. There are actually instructions on the repo for extending the trial without reverting to a snapshot, if I recall correctly, but it's been a while since I've looked into it.

You are completely missing the point with your example and it's in no way similar to what's happening here. Free to use and free to sell are completely different concepts.

Just because someone gave you the right to use for free something that belongs to them doesn't mean you are allowed to sell that right or that "something", or even pass it on for free.

I'm countering the analogy, not the case of Corellium. You're right: the analogy used here misses the point; it's not the same as what Corellium was doing.

The analogy is harmful because it implies that it's unreasonable to expect that like Microsoft and Apple would allow their software to be used for free for research purposes; it doesn't mention resale of the software. I don't see that as an unreasonable expectation; Microsoft does it without issue.

Edit: Just to be clear, Microsoft is not offering these VMs as a service. You are required to download the image and run it yourself. It’s basically just a license to use Windows for free as long as it’s for a specific kind of research.

It's a rolling 90 days...