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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 ;)
Now that is what we call good solid evidence (as if we didn't have enough) that SCO is pulling stuff out of it's royal... A big company like HP, doesn't just all of a sudden decide it's going to defend against a lost case.
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This is a good sign. I bet HP wouldn't do this without their lawyers being absolutely certain they have nothing to fear. Their conclusion must be the same as ours...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Presumably HP are doing this because they can now lay off the risk with an insuring for a low enough price to make it worthwhile. So this doesn't just mean HP are slam dunking SCO, but others - who have no direct IT interests - are doing it too. We are winning.
They're going to get some good press out of this, pick up some new customers (especially on the corporate side) and at the same time generate some goodwill for themselves.
AND at the same time they likely won't have to invest much in legal work - SCO doesn't really have a case (as has been demonstrated) and doesn't have the money to take on another big lawsuit anyways (think they would go after HP while the redhat/ibm lawsuits are out there? Not likely... their warchest has to be getting a bit less weighty these days)
considering that suing any users of copyrighted works whether its software, books or etc for infringment of the creator of that work is a considered not to have alegal standing and be a frivilous lawsuit..
What exactly is Hp indemifying since it woudl automatically win any lawsuit in this case given the conditions above?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Finally a company with enough courage to protect their customers. I wonder if anyone else will follow?
HP must be rather confident that SCOs claims wont hold up in court. I feel somewhat reassured by that.
If IBM and RedHat did this for their customers, more corporations would implement Linux and less money would go to SCO because of nervous corporate lawyers telling their IT departments to hold off or pay up.
About that target though...HP has been respected in the business information services industry for quite some time (although merging with Compaq perhaps tarnished that, but hey that's another story ;) So really, companies who are not so familiar with SCO other than their recent run of litigations will see the lawsuit as more frivolous, and start to ignore it more and more.
Really, the greatest side effect of major players lining up against SCO is that it will help undo the bad rep SCO gave Linux with the PHB's who don't know anything about tech other than what they see in the Wall Street Journal.
It's entirely possible that HP is making a calculated gamble that they can steal IBM's potential Linux customers out from under them by offering indemnification, even if they aren't 100% sure they have a defensible position.
Of course this brings up the point I was discussing with a friend of mine the other day: SCO's entire case for licensing binary versions of portions of the Linux kernel relies on forgiving them for ignorantly distributing these portions under the GPL. If such a courtesy is extended to SCO due to their ignorance, I doubt it would be denied to customers who were ignorantly violating SCO Group's so called intellectual property.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
The only reason HP is doing this is to attract more consumers to their own platform/hardware. And you know what? Who cares. The result is the same: indemnification for potential new users means SCO's FUD will have less of an effect on Linux adoption.
Yet again, Ayn Rand is shown to be correct.
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This decision will hopefully manoeuvre SCO into the courtroom (or into shutting up) and finally being forced to tell people what IP has been infringed, if any.
HP probably doesn't think SCO has got a chance at all, and see the possibility for getting some good PR (they certainly need it, as they are not doing too well in the computer market), both in the IT community and the public at large.
Heck, if they are lucky, maybe even a few people will be lured into buying a HP computer. :)
Perhaps my coffee hasn't kicked in yet, but why would anyone believe that HP would assume liability for people who may not even be customers? If they're going to be doing your company this favor, shouldn't it at least prove it's an HP customer? That seems pretty reasonable to me!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
This may a good move for HP to attract or steal customers but I'm not sure if this is good for Linux as a whole.
First this may strengthen and not weaken SCO's claims ("If SCO is wrong as anybody claims why do they offer me indemnification?")
Second I think that smaller companies have a harder sell now to bring Linux to customers since they don't have the deep pockets to give the same indemnifications for their customers.
If you can only sell Linux with an indemnification program only the Big Boys can do it and that is not something I want to see.
bye, Chris
They did sue IBM for violating "their" IP which has nothing to do with Linux or the GPL.
While everyone who has a tech sense about them knows SCO's case is full of shit, many non-tech savy CEO's are going to lean away from linux now, HP knows this, since they sell linux servers, they have to do something to keep customers from shying away.
Protect them from the big bag wolf that will never strike. Following IBM's lead, they decided to cover what ever linux claims are resolved from the case. ITs obvious they're will be none. This isn't a big company being conseincious, as much as it is a big company covering its ass.
Sure, their execs are making a bundle, but they're not going to use it to launch lawsuits that would force them to reveal what code they're claiming to own, especially since they know they wouldn't win.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
SCO's stock price took a little 5% dive
How it can be? We can expect a press conference of McBride this afrernoon...
Of course, this being
Well, yes, it's entirely possible. On the other hand, why should HP subsidize your purchase of a Dell CPU with a legal indemnity? This is not an altruistic idea on their part. They intend to profit from the indemnity. Software hardware and service contracts are all profit centres.
The nice thing about this is that it puts the shoe to the likes of MS saying "so why don't Linux vendors indemnify their customers if this is a slam-dunk for Linux?" Well, we now have at least one large manufacturerer effectively saying "We think that SCO's blatherings are bogus -- and we're willing to put our money where our mouth is."
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
SCO has no intention to sue Linux end-users
Originally, SCO had no intention of suing anyone at all:
According to McBride, "obviously Linux owes its heritage to UNIX, but not its code. We would not, nor will not, make such a claim."
But at the beginning of August:
"The legal liability for Linux clearly rests with the end user."
"We have the ability to go to users with lawsuits and we will if we have to."
McBride and company have never kept their story straight in the past - expecting them to do so now that they've made another statement we like would probably be overly optimistic.