You need to understand the network that you have. There are a number (at least 2) of points where communication could stop and you need to resolve all of them before you can access the device from the outside.
From the description, you have a TAP device on your local machine where the server listens to. Normally, you will not be able to access this TAP interface from outside your Linux box, even from another virtual machine on the VMWare network. The solution would be to bridge the TAP to the Linux's ethernet interface (which should be eth0, unless you have the stupid RedHat scheme; use ifconfig to be sure)
So, first create a bridge:
ip link add br0 type bridge
Then add the devices to the bridge (I assume that it is tap0, just as I assumed it should be eth0):
ip link set tap0 master br0
ip link set dev eth0 down
ip addr flush dev eth0
ip link set dev eth0 up
ip link set eth0 master br0
And make sure the bridge is up:
ip link set dev br0 up
You should now be able to access the server on tap0 from a virtual machine on the same VMWare virtual network. You should test this by bringing-up a second virtual machine.
In your virtual linux box, you now have the following network:
+------+ +-------+
| tap0 | | eth0 |
+------+ +-------+
| | |
+-------------+ +--------
bridge 0 "outside world"
Next: how does this VMWare virtual network connect to the outside world? Is this network also bridged on your Mac? Or is it NATted? In that case you should provide some port forwarding rules. Not sure how that works in VMWare, because, like many, I'm on VirtualBox.
In VirtualBox, the "outside world" can be a number of things, the most important are:
Bridged Adapter: like you did with the tap-interface, the virtual interface is bridged to the outside interface of the host that runs VirtualBox. The virtual machine will have its own IP address on the outside.
NAT: the virtual interface is connected with the outside, but via NAT (Network Address Translation). This is the way that most SOHO DSL routers connect to the Internet. On the outside, there is a single IP address, and if you want to access the machine from the outside, you must set-up portforwarding (never done that; not sure it is feasible in VirtualBox)
Host-only: A separate network, that should only be available within the VirtualBox environment.
In VirtualBox, therefore, the bridged adapter is the best suited for you.
Assuming you bridge in VirtualBox, you will now have the following network:
+------+ +-----+ }
| tap0 | | eth0| }
+------+ +-----+ } in your Linux virtual machine
| br0 | | }
+------------+ | }
|
Your host (mac) |
-----------------+ |
| |
+-----------+ physical outside world
| mac's eth0|--------------
+-----------+
Other issues you should look at is your IP plan and subnets.
