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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.
Free Ipod here
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
Helloooo... IBM, are you listening??? Wait, wasn't HP the supposed Fourtune 500 company that bought a SCO license?
-brain
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)
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
How much you want to bet HP paid for a "SCO Linux License" so they could "legally" distribute linux.. notice that it HAS to run on HP hardware..
There is still that "unknown" licensee of SCO's supposed linux license..
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.
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.
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.
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.