The Ubuntu Advantage? Canonical Takes On Red Hat (Linux Magazine) [LWN.net]

Linux Magazine takes a look at Canonical's new Advantage support program. The program is available in several levels for both desktops and servers and includes many of the expected features, but one that's a bit surprising: indemnification in case of patent (or other) claims. "One interesting new development is the offer of protection from litigation. Yes, although Canonical (unlike Novell) told Microsoft to go jump, it is selling protection from 'intellectual property' risks which might arise through the use of Linux. Hmm, that's curious, isn't it? In one way, its sort of playing into the whole racket. 'Ubuntu Linux could be at risk, so just pay us some money and we'll make sure that youre covered.'"

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The Ubuntu Advantage? Canonical Takes On Red Hat (Linux Magazine)

Posted Jun 10, 2010 17:00 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Ubuntu [GNU/]Linux could be at risk, so just pay us some money and we'll make sure that youre covered.

Yeh, but any operating system could be at risk. This could also be seen as sign that the risk with GNU/Linux is low, because they're claiming the risk is so low, they can protect you against it.

All depends how they advertise it.

The Ubuntu Advantage? Canonical Takes On Red Hat (Linux Magazine)

Posted Jun 10, 2010 17:07 UTC (Thu) by sharms (subscriber, #57357) [Link]

Ubuntu's indemnity is the same offering as Redhat and other commercial vendors. They all offer it because it is required for doing business with actual clients.

Nothing to see here.

The Ubuntu Advantage? Canonical Takes On Red Hat (Linux Magazine)

Posted Jun 10, 2010 18:48 UTC (Thu) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link]

If a risk is considered very low, but the damage if it goes bad is more than someone who bears this risk wants to have to pay, having an insurance market to collectivise the cost of dealing with it seems generally to be sensible. In this case the absolute risk is also arguably reduced by handling it in this way, if such risk results from the decisions of relatively few parties (e.g. patent trolls) who will be inherently less likely to take on a well-funded underwriter in court who will contest a claim than to choose to pick off individual commercial users who can't afford the legal and management costs of defending against unwarranted claims.

Various insurances for small risks which people probably wouldn't buy individually are also increasingly being used as extra incentives when selling things which people are more likely to want to buy, e.g. system support.

The Ubuntu Advantage? Canonical Takes On Red Hat (Linux Magazine)

Posted Jun 10, 2010 19:39 UTC (Thu) by ESRI (guest, #52806) [Link]

Competition is good.

Article points out two things going for RHEL right now... a large patent portfolio (companies use these as sort of a mutuall assured destruction thing) and a much larger engineering pool capable of addressing distro bugs and issues without relying on "upstream" for everything.

The Ubuntu Advantage? Canonical Takes On Red Hat (Linux Magazine)

Posted Jun 10, 2010 23:07 UTC (Thu) by mmcgrath (subscriber, #44906) [Link]

> a much larger engineering pool capable of addressing distro bugs and issues without relying on "upstream" for everything.

You'll find that many of those engineers working for Red Hat are upstream or at least part of upstream for several core Linux tools. This is a great advantage since it means that changes they make have a much higher likelihood of making it into the upstream repo instead of as a maintained fork at the distro level.

The Ubuntu Advantage? Canonical Takes On Red Hat (Linux Magazine)

Posted Jun 10, 2010 19:39 UTC (Thu) by rilder (subscriber, #59804) [Link]

That is wrong. It is like indirectly stating that if you don't(or use competitor's linux) you can get 'sued' for using linux. They will *surely* tarnish linux with that.

The Ubuntu Advantage? Canonical Takes On Red Hat (Linux Magazine)

Posted Jun 11, 2010 16:49 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

No. Any company might get sued, that's a fact of life. Canonical just gives insurance against this, as does RedHat.

You're missing the point: Linux CAN have IP illegally present.

Posted Jun 11, 2010 22:51 UTC (Fri) by Lukehasnoname (subscriber, #65152) [Link]

Should IP law be changed? Perhaps. But code from a closed source company CAN get into GPL systems wrongfully and people can sue.

Facts of life: Companies don't want surprises. People like security. That's why people buy alarms and insurance.

There's a difference between insurance and extortion

Posted Jun 13, 2010 22:18 UTC (Sun) by cypherpunks (guest, #1288) [Link]

There's a difference between "we'll guard you against arson", and "Nice place you have here. But it looks flammable. My pal Vinnie here has a bad habit of starting fires in a place like this. If we can come to some arrangement, I can make sure Vinnie doesn't come around here."

The basic idea, as far as I can see, is that if there's an IP problem with Ubuntu, either Canonical is going to get sued anyway, or some IP troll is starting its campaign by shaking down customers before tacking someone who'll actually fight.

"We'll defend you against our common enemy" is pretty significantly different from "We'll protect you from our litigious buddy Microsoft". Especially when the latter promise is not effective against other claimants.