HOUSTON -- The people who run this city recently heard a familiar pitch from Microsoft: Sign up for a multiyear, $12 million software licensing plan or face an audit exposing the city's use of software it hadn't paid for. Microsoft warned that the city could be slapped with stiff fines for using any Microsoft software for which it could not produce receipts. Scores of other businesses and public agencies, facing a similar dilemma, have agreed to the new licensing deals -- a linchpin of Microsoft's growth strategy. Not Houston. The nation's fourth-largest city rebuffed the offer and has embraced an...
