Looking for Indemnification While Linux Sales Double (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Jun 30, 2004 10:27 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

Not so FUDdish to me. More like the way biz people (as opposed to tech
people) tend to think. It's also an example of the same phenom that
caused SCO stock to stay so high for so long, when there were absolutely
zero technicals to keep it there, only the fact that enough biz
folks /thought/ it should be there that it stayed there.

A biz owner or C?O should be concerned about the possibility of a SCO
suit. Despite the likelihood that SCO will ultimately lose, in the mean
time it can dramatically affect sales and relationships with other peers,
as well as the stock price or equity valuation if private for lines of
credit and the like. It's a real concern, and that's what the article
reflected.

OTOH, the article ALSO reflected the fact that what would /ordinarily/ be
something of a disaster, now seems to be treated as more business as
usual, nothing serious at all. The author didn't opin much on this,
except to reflect on how unusual it was, and that's appropriate for the
type of article it was. However, what it means for the biz owner/c?o
investigating Linux is that the ordinary aversion to litigation barely
applies at all in this case -- the all-critical relationship to peers and
partners isn't likely to be affected much if at all, as it's simply being
treated as an ordinary fact of business, nothing unusual or to be worried
about. It /could/ affect stock price or credit worthiness to some greater
extent, but even that seems to be less of an issue every day, as the
markets finally absorb what the technicians have been saying for over a
year, now.

All that said, a prudent business person will have contemplated the
options and will understand not only the potential risk (or lack thereof),
but will have coverage and an action plan in place, should the bad
actually come to pass. This article simply provided a /very/ basic
introduction to the types of things such a biz person should be
considering. It would be in /none/ of our best interests if such a biz
person, /not/ being informed, rolled over to SCO like a submissive puppy,
and one aware of the issues BEFORE they get that demand letter is far LESS
likely to do so.

IOW, the article was a fairly balance if /very/ brief and slightly
misinformed (re OSRM, see the other thread) treatment, from a biz person
perspective, not the technician's perspective most of us here on LWN are
likely to have.

That's my opinion, anyway.

Duncan

Posted Jun 30, 2004 16:29 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

Reading the article, it seems clear to me that the "legal" risk is litigation, not damages. Nobody believes that SCO could possibly win anything, but there's the risk that users will have to respond to a lawsuit. It sounds like "there's a psychopath out there targetting Linux users; here's what you should do to protect yourself" rather than saying that there's anything actually wrong with using Linux.

The thing I find strange about the article is that it implies that Linux is low-cost. While there are low-cost and no-cost Linux solutions, the server space where the growth is is largely high-end servers, where the purchase prices are upwards of $50K and the operating system is not a separate item. You can easily spend $100K on a system which wouldn't run without Linux. Obviously, you want protection for the system as a whole, and that protection has to cover the operating system.

Posted Jun 30, 2004 10:03 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

I'd agree w/ your evaluation of the OSRM products, but not so much with
the vendor stuff. Granted, the vendor stuff does tend to be rather
limited, but the article /does/ tend to point that out, as well. The
exception might be Novell, which the author seems quite favorable toward,
but which I've seen little coverage of their indemnification policy, other
than this. See my (soon) reply to the other post for additional thoughts.

Duncan