Red Hat‘s program features warranty to guarantee customers the right to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux without interruption. A key feature of the Open Source Assurance Program is an Intellectual Property Warranty. The warranty ensures, that in the event that an infringement issue is identified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux software code, Red Hat will replace the infringing code. Read more for the PR.
Red Hat Announces Open Source Assurance to Safeguard Customer Investment
Program features warranty to guarantee customers the right to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux without interruption.
RALEIGH, N.C. — Jan. 20, 2004 – Today, Red Hat, Inc. ( Nasdaq: RHAT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, announced that all existing and future Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers are now covered under the Open Source Assurance program. Red Hat designed the Open Source Assurance program to provide customers a guarantee thattheir investment in open source solutions from Red Hat will generate long-term economic value. The announcement of this program confirms Red Hat’s unwavering commitment to its customers and open source.
A key feature of the Open Source Assurance Program is an Intellectual Property Warranty. The warranty ensures, that in the event that an infringement issue is identified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux software code, Red Hat will replace the infringing code. Red Hat’s warranty assures
customers that they can use Red Hat Enterprise Linux and related solutions without interruption. The warranty is available for all customers having a valid registered subscription to Red Hat Enterprise Linux or related
solutions.
“Enterprise platform deployments are key investments that should be protected. Red Hat customers have the security of a trusted partner to guarantee a resolution should there be an issue for continued use,” said Bryan Sims, vice president of Business Development at Red Hat. “We have provided this guarantee to many of our large enterprise customers and we are now extending this guarantee to all customers who use Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”
The Open Source Now Fund is also a feature of the Open Source Assurance program. The Fund was created by Red Hat in August to assist companies with any legal expenses associated with litigation related to the development of software under the GPL or other open source license and to
prepare educational materials related to such software and litigation.
almost indemnification but not quite or at least thats the way it seems to me. I mean replacing the code is good and all but SCO could still sue for current damages still couldnt they?
well SCO still has to win in court…
Why should Red Hat promise to pay dammages when they have access to neither SCO or IBM’s code. I think It is kind of stupid to base your company on a gamble like that. SCO appears to be full of shit but I thought O.J. was full of it too.
This is another protection racket which may have licence restrictions (read loss of freedom) attached. It really does look line the corps are taking over linux, and users may as a result see activation codes, DHS backdoors, binary only distros, shared source only in highly specific situations (university projects) or some other highly controlled group(s) covered by NDA’s. SCO plays the bad guy which allows the other major players (Novell, HP, Dell, Sun, IBM, others) to wear the white hat and pretend to be innocent victims. It all depends on what IBM does, and how they might structure a settlement. The main thing is to hold IBM and these big tech firms accountable for supporting the GPL as a consequence of them benefiting from linux.
“The main thing is to hold IBM and these big tech firms accountable for supporting the GPL as a consequence of them benefiting from linux.”
And just what money does do the supporters of the GPL plan to use in a defense of a suit against IBM?
IBM and others are still attempting to overcome the shock of all the FREE labor at their disposal.
The Linux community is looking to get exposure, IBM, Novell and others are looking at how to steal the show… If they haven’t already done it…..
lwn.net reported that RH borrowed 500 million dollars recently. RH claim they have not plans for it yet, wonder if that is related at all to this warranty or not…
This assurance that different companies are offering these days sound like a big hoax to me.
They on the one side call the community to fight against the so evil SCO but on the other side they detected a new marketing area selling ASSURANCES to customers.
Assurance for what ? The software is open source and most of the stuff even licensed under the terms of GNU/(L)GPL, BSD and whatever licenses. There is NO and I mean absolutely NO need to assurance someone something.
Offering assurances to consumers is like agreeing that SCO’s claims are legally right.
This is all a big marketing hoax a total ripoff of what’s free already. Total freedom (the stuff that RMS and his FSF prays all the time) means that there is NO owner of software, that everyone has the right to use, change, sell it as long as it goes conform with the licensing modell. Offering an assurance is nothing more than cutting this freedom.
.. not to mention that we now see the real face of the problems that Open Source bring us. SCO is a good example how much of nothing FSF is able to do, the lawsuits as I know it is being made by the big players with the real money. Let’s assume there wasn’t IBM, RedHat and some other companies who offer the money to do this lawsuit.. where have we been today ? Every 2nd Linux user sued and nobody there knocking on the back of FSF saying ‘please help me’. Open Source as idea is brilliant, as community project brilliant as well. But it’s also a target for people who rip it off and totally abuse it. Totally against the understanding of what it is. The realworld scenario once again proves that not everyone share the same sights and that luckely not everyone should blindly jump on the same boat.
I think that money might be for company by-outs. Red Hat recently aquired Sistina (storage mngment) and also raised 600 million though a bond offering if thats what you ment? So its cash reserves are now around 1 billion. Projects used to be left alone in the linux community or you sent patches upstream for your distro. You never went to buy out gnome, qt, mono, or buy out another distro so you can merge tools. But Novell jumped right in and is trying to position itself as a technology leader with thier OSS buy-outs. I see them in the future not developing for other projects, instead bundling it with thier old propriatary software locking out everyone else or atleast not allowing re-distrobution. Well It’s not a guess really since they admitted to it in a more bland way.
Anyway the point is projects that use to be left alone to work for everyone will now be bought out before the other guy does it. Too bad these guys don’t have enough cash to buy out Nvidia so we could get some decent OSS drivers =)
In case you haven’t been following the pop-tech-media, like zdnet; analysts like Laura DiDio have been claiming for the last six months, that users of OSS are at grave risk of being sued by scox or others. This idea is also perpetuated by several lawfirms, esspecially Overly, who even wrote a book on the subject.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0937275123/qid=107460…
Eben Moglen, attorney and professor of law at Columbia University, has explained many times that the idea of suing end users has no legal foundation. It’s as if you bought a book that turned out to have some plagerized matterial in it: the book’s author may be liable, the publishing company may be liable, but certainly not the buyer – the end-user – of the book.
As such, it is important to note that even if scox owned unix, scox still would have no grounds to sue linux end-users. Especially since scox has distributed the same code themselves. If fact, scox continues to distribute that code. Scox also distibutes SAMBA with their UnixWare product.
Although scox has no legal foundation, msft/scox has managed to flood the media enough to scare linux end-users (PHBs?). And therefore, enough to force linux distributors to indemnify. I consider this a huge victory for msft/scox.
Offering assurances to consumers is like agreeing that SCO’s claims are legally right.
I think it’s meant to show that RedHat is so confident that SCO is wrong that it’s ready to take the (non-)risk of indemnifying its customers.
Am I the only one who thought this sounded like a good idea?
This is a great way to combat the very real growing concern about whether or not it is actually legal to license a linux distro (or at least use it and pay for support for it) that many businesses have.
The fact is, Red Hat doesn’t own the Linux code, and never has or will.
I don’t know what the problem you all have with businesses making money. The GPL wasn’t designed to make sure you didn’t have to pay for the OS. It was designed to make sure that one company doesn’t control the important software that we interact with everyday, in a secretive proprietary way.
Bottom line, companies need to make money – people do not go into business unless they think they can make money.
I’m no Microsoft lover, in fact I use Linux at home, and look forward eagerly to the day when I can switch to Linux full time. I’d also be the first to point out the similarities between modern corporatism and what was once called fascism. Having written that, it should be understood that corporation doesn’t always equal evil. There are plenty of big companies corporation or not, that do the right thing on a daily basis. Not all of them are good, and the bad ones need to be dealt with in a way they currently are not, but my point remains. Red Hat has shown no reason for people to think they are highjacking Linux or ever intend to. In fact they seem to have on a number of occasions done the exact opposite.
As a Linux advocate, who believes in the philosophical views of the GNU and the GPL, I have this to say; Get a grip.
wise words you speak!
“Although scox has no legal foundation, msft/scox has managed to flood the media enough to scare linux end-users (PHBs?). And therefore, enough to force linux distributors to indemnify. I consider this a huge victory for msft/scox.”
I consider it much more like another symptom of the depravity to which reporters will stoop to get “the scoop.” If journalists were more responsible with their skills, nobody like Microsoft or SCO would be able to flood the media with anything.
As to whether this is a “big win” for them—it depends on whether people are stupid enough to be frightened of SCO, based on the words of sycophant reporters sucking up to big money. I’m not.
The indemnity thing? Well, SCO said “if you are so confident, why don’t you indemnify?” So they did.
You have some very good points.
I have an alternative theory. I don’t believe that SCO is targeting the end users of IBM and RedHat, but rather the stock market performance of IBM and RedHat.
Here is my line of thought. SCO will do anything to pump up their own stocks. The flip side of that coin is that to do damage to their foes, SCO will do anything to deflate their stocks. Therefore, SCO wants to create the impression of going after the linux users in order to affect IBM & RedHat stock performance.
This goes a long way to explain SCO’s bizzare behaviour. This explains why even with the best lawyers that money could buy working for them, they are simply ignoring the law and all legal conventions. Its not about a legal case – it is about destroying companies via collapsing their stock value. A company can be extremely strong via cash flow and liquid assets and yet go under due to stock performance.
>>Therefore, SCO wants to create the impression of going after the linux users in order to affect IBM & RedHat stock performance.<<
Of course, this could be, but I personally don’t think so. Just because of the way the stock market works.
I used to invest in AMD – I saw this pattern many times: amd would make gains on intc, that would cause intc go down, which would in turn cause amd go down even more. Why? The way the market thinks is: if intc is hurting a little, then amd must really be suffering.
I seen scox go up with rhat and novl several times in the past. Why? They are all in the sector. The market figures that if one linux distributor is doing well, then they all must be doing well. Even stranger, scox is not really a linux distributor – except on paper. Still, as far the market is concerned, scox is lumped in with the linux distrubers.
I know. I seems crazy. But that is the way the market works.
Except sometimes.