A start-up has launched an insurance scheme to protect
Linux users against being sued by the SCO Group,just as SCO loses its main venture capital
investor.
Open Source Risk Management said it was a "virtual certainty"
that following SCO's lawsuits against Linux suppliers such as IBM
and users such as DaimlerChrysler, others will be sued by
companies like SCO trying to enforce their alleged intellectual
property in open-source software.
The New York firm said that supplier-neutral open-source
insurance would protect users against third-party claims, warning
that the "terrible vulnerability" of shared ownership software
could cost the hapless user $150,000 a time or $3m in legal defence
fees if sued for patent infringement.
However, the scary prospects put forward by the new company have
not been well received. Comments on message boards about the
offering conclude that users cannot be liable for copyright
infringement as they have not copied anything. Only the supplier
would be liable.
Martin Brampton, director of Black Sheep Research, agreed,
adding that that was why companies like Hewlett-Packard
automatically protected their customers from being sued as a result
of using the company's Linux offering.
"Sounds like nice work if you can get it," he said. "But I can't
see that they've got anything to offer. The kind of people they
want to insure aren't really at risk.
"Until SCO has won a big case - against IBM or HP - they haven't
got a cat in hell's chance against individual users.It could go
after people for not paying licence fees but the courts aren't
going to do anything. It just isn't going to hit ordinary user
companies.
"And now that BayStar is asking for its $20m funding back from
SCO, that does suggest that they are not expecting a bonanza from
these lawsuits. I think that action strongly suggests that people
who have access to inside information share the scepticism [of
people who think that such lawsuits are going to fail]."
The investor's move is another blow to SCO's public image and,
potentially, to its plans to fight expensive courtroom battles.
BayStar's investment in SCO became a matter of controversy last
month when it was revealed that Microsoft had been behind the
venture capitalist's interest in the company. SCO had previously
denied that the Linux rival had had anything to do with the BayStar
deal.
SCO also suffered a setback when IBM asked a judge to throw out
the company's claim against it which had alleged intellectual
property rights over every version of Unix that IBM had ever
produced.
IBM made it clear that it felt confident that SCO had not
produced enough evidence to make its case, and promptly issued a
counterclaim of patent infringement for UnixWare.
Madeleine Acey writes for Techworld.com