IT users are divided on whether new legal
indemnification programs from major suppliers such as Sun
Microsystems, Novell, Hewlett-Packard and SuSE Linux will fuel a
wider adoption of Linux within their businesses.
A sample of users questioned about the issue at the LinuxWorld
Conference & Expo in New York, said the expanded
indemnification programs make them more comfortable with Linux. But
they said other factors remain to be addressed inside their
companies before they can decide how to proceed.
Rudy Ebisch, assistant technical support director for core
systems in the IT division of Canon USA, said legal concerns are
definitely a factor as his company eyes Linux as a possible
alternative in a migration from multiple operating systems.
"That's the number-one question my general manager asked when I
was coming here," Ebisch said.
So far, Canon is trying out the open-source operating system
only in small ways, including experiments with network monitoring
tools. But as major suppliers, including Hewlett-Packard, Novell
and Oracle, adopt Linux strategies, Canon's options continue to
expand.
"It makes it legitimate," said Ebisch. "I'm not taking the risk
I would have a year ago."
For Canon, though, any move to Linux will be slow as the
company is looking more so much for long-term security than cost
reductions. The company, which has deployments of Novell NetWare,
IBM AIX, HP-UX and Windows NT on several hardware platforms, would
be more likely consider Linux as a replacement for one of the
existing systems instead of adding it to the mix, he said.
Richard Teasdale, a Unix administrator for a US insurance
company that he asked not to be named, said indemnification
programs "make it more palatable" to consider Linux.
"I don't think it's a make-or-break issue," he said. "We're
looking at it. We're under tremendous pressure to reduce costs so
we're looking at every way ... and Linux is one of them."
Colt Jackson, a systems engineer at CareFirst, a health care
insurance company, said IT planning in the insurance industry moves
at a conservative pace. As a result, indemnification programs are
helpful, but are unlikely to trigger a mass migration by insurance
firms.
"They definitely want to limit risks," he said
Another user, an enterprise architect at a financial services
company who asked to remain anonymous, said indemnification is
meaningful.
"It actually is something we were really concerned about. We
were in the process of putting together a position paper on Linux
when the [SCO] lawsuit hit, and we put it on hold," he said. "But
to have companies step to the plate and say they're having
indemnification programmes meant they were acknowledging and
dealing with the problem."
Questions remain, though. "We're not coming away from this with
any big reasons not to [move to Linux," said the enterprise
architect. But because it could take years for legal issues to be
resolved, "it's important for the companies that believe in their
[Linux] products to back them up with indemnification," he
added.
Alex Drought, head of technology for film editing workers at
Blue Sky Studios, a unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment, said
indemnification means little in his business, where film studios
can quickly turn to other operating systems such as Apple's Mac OS
X in the event of legal problems such as the SCO lawsuit.
However, he did appreciate the situation faced by financial
services and insurance companies, where a quick change is
impossible because of the depth of their IT integration and
architectures. "They cannot turn on a dime if things change
overnight," he said. "They would really be in a tough
position."
On Monday, Red Hat said it will offer a program that it calls
the Open Source Assurance Program to protect all existing and
future Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers from legal challenges as
long as they're using the software. Red Hat's move comes on the
heels of last week's decision by Novell to indemnify SuSE Linux
customers against possible legal action from SCO.
In its lawsuit, SCO alleges that IBM contributed some of SCO's
System V Unix code illegally to the open-source Linux project.
Additional suits and countersuits have been filed by Red Hat and
Novell since the case began.
Todd R Weiss writes for Computerworld
Linux identification is unnecessary, says IBM >>