Plenty of companies sell proprietary software: Microsoft, Apple and Oracle, for example. And many companies, such as Red Hat and IBM, make money by selling support, hosting or consulting for open-source software. But what's less known is that companies can release their software as open-source while also selling a commercial version of the same product.

CIOs looking to move existing software assets into the cloud but unsure about the licensing arrangements should leverage credits and other transfer services to minimise the impact, says one of the designers of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service.

On-demand BI vendor Birst announced Tuesday that it is now offering the option of concurrent user pricing, a licensing model few BI providers use because it can limit the amount of money they make compared to typical "named user" pricing.

EnterpriseDB, which offers a supported version of the open-source PostGres database, is now offering unlimited subscriptions that will allow organizations to run as many copies of the database server software as they desire. Total cost? US$40,000 per year.

As if Oracle did not have enough work convincing MySQL users of its good intentions, the company also should set its sites on getting the Java platform back on track, contends a Google chief architect.

For decades, software buyers have been engaged in an "arranged marriage" type of relationship with software vendors: too much tradition, too little choice and a partnership of unequals from a deal's beginning. Typically, these deals had two key variables: the number of seat licenses (volume) a company purchased and the amount that the software publisher was willing to discount the purchase price, which was linked back to the volume.

Open-source software is an increasingly popular software development and distribution model that may spread further in the face of financial constraints in our current economy. With publicly available source code generally offered without charge, it is tempting to look to open source for potentially significant cost savings in this time of need.