Slashdot Mirror
HP Offers Linux Purchasers Indemnification
PnViking writes points out this story in the Detroit News, writing "HP is now covering any claims from SCO if you bought Linux and have a support contract from them: '"We will provide full indemnity across the entire suite for any SCO-related action," said Martin Fink, HP's vice president of Linux. "If (customers) were to get sued by SCO, we would take over their defense and assume liability on their behalf."'" The catch is, you have to be running it on HP equipment ;)
SCO's stock price took a little 5% dive at the end of the day yesterday. This must have been the news.
It only makes sense for systems integrators like HP and IBM to support Linux. They are providing a service in putting their systems together and want to catch as much of the value-add as possible. Paying a rent to Microsoft detracts from that.
Proof of the fact that all commercial players are using scare tactics to sell kit, that is. Those vendors that offer "indemnification" provided you use their hardware or whatever catch there is, are just as bad as SCO.
Vendors are slowly realising that customers are increasingly clued-up about where, how, and on what they spend their money. I was with a customer recently that had been badgered and hammered around by Sun to upgrade their systems. The customer saw no good reason to do so, and subsequently, Sun came around to provide a "free systems review", with a resulting verdict that the software and (SPARC) hardware was out of date. The customer agreed about the software part, and deployed Linux across the ageing SPARC estate. The stuff is now faster, better, and easier to manage, and they recon they a have a few more years of life out of those systems.
Sun turned around and claimed that the systems are now unsupported - not a big deal, customer said. if it breaks we will buy new (Intel.... hehe). Sun then turned around and went to the CEO and the legal department, talking about indemnification, SCO, courtcases and the world coming to an end. Luckily, the customer was not fazed, and Sun lost a *lot* of goodwill in that place. However, other customers will be scared and bullied into going along.
If they only way you can flog your hardware is by using scare tactics, then you are *really* selling a pile of crap.....
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
The HP piece clearly lays out the extent of indemnity HP is giving its (hopefully) valued customers, I really doubt they would be slipshod or stupid enough to "fineprint" their customers into a lawsuit. They would probably just rely on the OSS community rectifying any violating code as soon as it is shown to them.
The piece on SCO not sueing is full to the brim of hypocritical statements by SCO execs and lawyers which show that they may or may not sue, probably depending on how many of gullible Companies fall for their $699 invoice.
Wait, wasn't HP the supposed Fourtune 500 company that bought a SCO license?
No.. Although it was speculated at the time. Also, HP was an original sponsor of the SCO users conference, but pulled out.
The latest 10-Q quarterly report from SCO makes it clear that Sun was the other licensee:
We initiated the SCOsource effort to review the status of these existing licensing and sublicensing agreements and to identify others in the industry that may be currently using our intellectual property without obtaining the necessary licenses. This effort resulted in the execution of two license agreements during the April 30, 2003 quarter. The first of these licenses was with Sun Microsystems, Inc. ("Sun"), a long-time licensee of the UNIX source code and a major participant in the UNIX industry, and was a "clean-up" license to cover items that were outside the scope of Sun's initial UNIX license. The second license was to Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft")"