I just thought a bit more about this and how it applies to enterprise software as well. A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted about a two-week consulting gig

I just thought a bit more about this and how it applies to enterprise software as well. A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted about a two-week consulting gig to help a government agency figure out (1) what hardware platforms to deploy their application on and (2) which Weblogic licenses to purchase to minimize overall costs. They wanted to choose hardware with licensing costs in mind. Contrast this with the purchase of an enterprise support contract for Drools (JBoss's rules engine). For two-hour 24/7 support (I think, this was a year ago), they simply quote $45K for up to 64 production (and DR?) processor sockets -- more than most people will ever use. When faced with complex licensing terms for an otherwise good software component, I wonder how many developers just convince the boss to use something else, usually Open Source.