Its a little bit tricky, but this is how it works:

Get download-url

Go to http://www.vmware.com/go/getserver and login (or register).

get the download-url of the file (right-click…):

Get cookie

To download via wget, you need to get the cookie named “ObSSOCookie” from your browser.

Download via wget

Use this command to download the file:

wget --no-check-certificate --header="Cookie: ObSSOCookie=<content>" "<url>" -O vmware-server.tar.gz

Example:

wget –no-check-certificate –header=”Cookie: ObSSOCookie=content” “https://www.vmware.com/freedownload/p/download.php?product=server20&a=DOWNLOAD_FILE&baseurl=http://download2.vmware.com/software/server/&filename=VMware-server-2.0.1-156745.i386.tar.gz” -O vmware-server.tar.gz

Happy downloading ;).