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JBoss Group goes for indemnification

[Posted November 17, 2003 by corbet]

The JBoss Group has announced that it will be offering indemnification against patent and copyright suits (relating to the JBoss Application Server) to its customers. "Among the challenges for companies moving to open source technologies, such as the JBoss application server, are concerns regarding intellectual property rights. By offering industry standard indemnification for the JBoss application server, JBoss Group is taking another vital step in its efforts to promote Professional Open Source for the enterprise market. The company is committed to making it easier and safer than ever for customers to develop and deploy open source technologies." There is no mention of what sort of insurance coverage the JBoss Group may have put into place to enable it to back up its promise if need be.

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JBoss Group goes for indemnification

Posted Nov 17, 2003 16:35 UTC (Mon) by mdekkers (guest, #85) [Link]

"Industry standard indemnification"? What industry? And what standard? The release is thick on spin and hype, and thin on detail. SCO really let the cat out of the bag with this whole "indemnification" thing - every idiot now seems to think that it is a fast ticket to making money.

Stupid.....

JBoss Group goes for indemnification

Posted Nov 17, 2003 17:05 UTC (Mon) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]

You mean the paper bag they can't fight their way out of?

JBoss Group goes for indemnification

Posted Nov 17, 2003 23:14 UTC (Mon) by ronaldcole (guest, #1462) [Link]

Once again, "100% buzzword compliance" has been met...

JBoss Group goes for indemnification

Posted Nov 17, 2003 16:52 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

The industry standard is that there is no indemification... sounds to me that Jboss will soon be bought by SCO. <Sorry did I say that out loud.>

JBoss Group goes for indemnification

Posted Nov 17, 2003 17:00 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Actually, Microsoft is now offering indemnification in some circumstances, but it is limited to the purchase price of the software. If this is the new standard, free software authors could afford to offer it and promise to refund the zero dollars that users have paid.

JBoss Group goes for indemnification

Posted Nov 18, 2003 17:41 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Seeing that JBoss is now licensed with Sun, the grassy knoll theories look even better.

JBoss Group goes for indemnification

Posted Nov 17, 2003 18:29 UTC (Mon) by patriot (guest, #14594) [Link]

What does this really mean seeing as Sun will still have to license your code if used for commercial purposes?

Opportunism

Posted Nov 17, 2003 20:15 UTC (Mon) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

My opinion of the JBoss group just dropped down several notches.

1) There is no such thing as industry standard indemnification.

The only people saying this have been SCO and their lackeys. This seems
like another case of cashing in on the pain caused by SCO. Yes, Sun
also dropped down several notches earlier this year with their SCO
funding, press release, and indemnification garbage.

If companies are really worried about this buy insurance. I'm sure some
insurance company is willing to offer coverage for innocent copyright and
patent infringement. You don't have to wait for the software producer to
offer indemnification. Isn't insurance really the standard way to cap
liability?

2) Copyright and patent worries are not unique to open source projects.

Really. Why aren't people demanding indemnification from SCO with their
licenses? Why does almost every company disclaim all warranties and all
liability?

3) End users are not liable for innocent infringement for mere use.

Think about it. If you bought a book and read it and it contained
plagiarized passages would you or the author be liable? Does copyright
even cover the ability to own a copy or to read it? I think the answers
are "the author" and "no" respectively. But of course I'm not a lawyer.
If someone knows otherwise please correct me.

Patents are a little different because they do cover use. But again
think of a real-world example, not a SCO-twisted-reality example. If
you bought a toaster which infringed on a patent would you be liable
for owning or using it? Again, I think the answer is "no" but I'm not
a lawyer.

I'm also not too impressed with JBoss' copyright infringement claims
against Apache recently since, if I remember correctly, it turned out most
of the problems were because JBoss used their code and accidentally removed
some copyright attributions.

How much of this legal strangulation can the software industry take?
Of course IANAL and maybe an IP lawyer would be able to explain why it
makes sense. Of course an IP lawyer also makes money on messes like this.

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