I've been fortunate in the past to always work with companies who purchased the Macromedia Adobe Coldfusion licence. But recently I was asked if a CF enviorment could be set up cheaply (i.e. as cheap as ASP, PHP)? Before anyone jump in with the usual argument of "Well for ASP you need a Windows licence" etc. Most people really DON'T care. They have an abundance of licences and machines lying around. What is discouraging though is the "Well its about £1000 for a CF licence". I know, I know it will save you in maintenance, building time down the road. But its always seen as an extra cost, like it or lump it.
Anyway, back to the original point. My answer (to the question could a CF enviorment could be set up cheaply) was yes. There's Bluedragon. I've never used it, but always hear good things. So as you could imagine I was shocked to learn that as of ver 6.2 of BD, there is now a licence for commerical(non-SSL) use of this.
Personally I see this as a sad move by New Atlanta. Im not saying they shouldn't of done this, they deserve to make money and get rewards for their hard work. I just wonder if they should of/could of tried a MySQL type licence first, and seen how the response was? I think if CF is ever going to move into the market share of the free languages then we need a free contender. There is a free cf engine out there called Ignite Fusion, though i haven't had a chance to use this it looks like some of the basic syntax is different e.g. <cfloop> become <cffor>. There is definately a gap here that needs filling.
The good news is that you can still use 6.1 ver of BD for free, though it is no longer available for download.