Slashdot Mirror
JBoss Offers Lawsuit Indemnification
prostoalex writes "JBoss Group offered its customers indemnification from potential legal problems related to patent violations and copyright lawsuits. According to Bob Bickel, JBoss VP, the move is intended to give customers more peace of mind when deciding whether to go with open-source software." The article also mentions Jboss' legal challenge to Apache Geronimo, of which Bickel said "...the letter to the Apache Software Foundation was never intended to be made public and said the conflict has been blown out of proportion."
Indemnification from who and what exactly? That's like offering supernova insurance, only suckers will buy.
Trolling is a art,
This whole "Pay us and you won't be sued" thing sure sounds like white-collar extortion to me.
...but is it a good or bad one?
It mollifies fears about switching to open-source software, but it does leave projects without a financial backing out in the cold.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
You're assuming by "copying" he means "cut and paste." Not at all. Copying could be somebody who read the JBoss code (which is open, and pretty good. I read quite a bit of it myself trying to decide whether it was a viable alternative to the ghastly expensive BEA WebSphere) writing identical functions for Geronimo. A bit like aspiring artists copying a famous painting, only much more illegal. Alternatively, it could be some well meaning developer thinking that "clean room" just means he has to retype it.
I've seen a lot of aspiring programmers retype what's "in the book" and consider it their own work. It's entirely possible a contributor to Geronimo did the exact same thing.
It's just about customer perception, they know sco dosent have a case so why not offer it, no loss for them and only positive benifits.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
I'm glad it sounds like extortion. It'd be a sad day when you needed protection to use open source.
IOW, if you want to be 'indemnified' then you have to buy JBoss, which is kinda dumb since it's supposed to be 'free'. Heh. Yay open source!
Why not imdemnify everyone against anything, by outsourcing this function to my-indemnification.com! It could be some kind of throwaway company (just like SCOX), little more than a web page, actually. Maybe there is some way to set it up as some kind of lightning rod that would waste the resources of those who pursue dubious claims via the legal system.
But with current worries over the legality of Linux and validity of Open-Source licensing, it's not an empty off, at least from a PR perspective.
I think that the fact that JBoss felt the need to announce such a decision just shows that the OS movement is indeed feeling the heat from SCO's lawsuits/FUD/etc, and that action definately needs to be taken against them. Class-action comes to mind, is JBoss in with those standing off against SCO, the more the merrier.
Original comment
I have a questin about this whole indemnification thing. Why would I as someone who purchased or was even give a product from a comercial entity be worried about being sued if the comercial entity was using tech in violation of a patent?
I mean as I understand it, it would be like all of the people who own a Xboxs are suddenly told that they have to pay Sony and additional $200 or be sued because MS used some propritary hardware in their counsle. Why wouldn't just MS be stuck holding the bag? Are not the customers protected by a good faith purchase agreement or something? Or would the task of sueing MS to get your $200 dollars back be left up to you (or some class action lawsuit)?
I am sure I am oversimplifying the matter, but I'm hopping this be a starting point for an explination.
Thanks
The "i spilled hot coffee on my lap waa waa" suit sounds frivolous until you look at the facts:
McFact #1: The coffee the lady bought was over 270 degrees. That is dangerous.
McFact #2: McDonald's had received about 17 complaints over the years about hot coffee. They ignored the complaints.
McFact #3: The woman who spilled the coffee initially tried to settle out of court for a reasonable 30 million. McDonald's ignored her.
McFact #4: The woman received 3rd degree burns over much of her body.
I'm amazed nobody's popped a cap in Ken Lay's ass yet. Nobody gives a damn about accountablity anymore. I blame Clinton.
Could be a good thing, or it might just be a way to generate press and a positive spin. One area where this "protection" might be useful is in the use of AOP [and any other patented technologies/processes]. IIRC, JBoss 4.x uses and supports the use of AOP, yet AOP is patented (patent granted mid year). So if AOP is your thing and you use it and for some reason the patent holders decide to come collecting, I guess you can give them JBoss' address.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
And that lady's a pain in the ass. Learn to use a cup. If you need stability while drinking coffee, go inside and find a solid, well-anchored table rather than sit in your jouncin bouncin hoopdy. You might want to strap yourself to the table as well.
Now all I need is legal protection if I violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Who's going to pony up for that!
not by va lairIE/robbIE's whoreabully infactdead PostBlock(tm) devise, of course, it's still not working.
j pg
--Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily (as forever seems undoable) been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down like with fuddles' phonIE corepirate nazi bouNTy hunter ?pr? scams. If you think this is unfair, we don't care.--
that's right, this stuff (the pateNTdead eyecon0meter kode) is unbreakable, wwworks on several (more than 3) dimensions, & requires no particular payper gadget to operate on.
Two programs got the nod, so far. The top priority is planet/population rescue. Other goals mandated include the permanent disempowerment of unprecedented evile, & assurance that the planet/population is around to enjoy the gnu millennium of open/honest communications/commerce. Your grandchildren will survive to produce additional uses for the powers that are rescuing us from the greed/fear/ego based life0cide, as the lights come up...
consult with/trust in yOUR creator... get ready to see the light.
this is what pinged the kode base:
-Mon 3:16pm MSFT Gates Unveils Junk E-Mail Software - Associated Press-
that's a gooed won.
we don't need any stinking indemnification, thanks anyway robbIE? we don't even like the word.
mug shot of stock markup fraud hostage:
http://www.crynwr.com/~nelson/linuxexpo/qv_016.
How exactly did reality make it to a slashdot post...parent should be moded up so this blatent flaunting of the truth can be brought to everyones attention. From now on, please just stick to the fiction Sir.
McFact No. 1: For years, McDonald's had known they had a problem with the way they make their coffee - that their coffee was served much hotter (at least 20 degrees more so) than at other restaurants.
McFact No. 2: McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious injuries - more than 700 incidents of scalding coffee burns in the past decade have been settled by the Corporation - and yet they never so much as consulted a burn expert regarding the issue.
McFact No. 3: The woman involved in this infamous case suffered very serious injuries - third degree burns on her groin, thighs and buttocks that required skin grafts and a seven-day hospital stay.
McFact No. 4: The woman, an 81-year old former department store clerk who had never before filed suit against anyone, said she wouldn't have brought the lawsuit against McDonald's had the Corporation not dismissed her request for compensation for medical bills.
McFact No. 5: A McDonald's quality assurance manager testified in the case that the Corporation was aware of the risk of serving dangerously hot coffee and had no plans to either turn down the heat or to post warning about the possibility of severe burns, even though most customers wouldn't think it was possible.
McFact No. 6: After careful deliberation, the jury found McDonald's was liable because the facts were overwhelmingly against the company. When it came to the punitive damages, the jury found that McDonald's had engaged in willful, reckless, malicious, or wanton conduct, and rendered a punitive damage award of 2.7 million dollars. (The equivalent of just two days of coffee sales, McDonalds Corporation generates revenues in excess of 1.3 million dollars daily from the sale of its coffee, selling 1 billion cups each year.)
McFact No. 7: On appeal, a judge lowered the award to $480,000, a fact not widely publicized in the media.
McFact No. 8: A report in Liability Week, September 29, 1997, indicated that Kathleen Gilliam, 73, suffered first degree burns when a cup of coffee spilled onto her lap. Reports also indicate that McDonald's consistently keeps its coffee at 185 degrees, still approximately 20 degrees hotter than at other restaurants. Third degree burns occur at this temperature in just two to seven seconds, requiring skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability to the victims for many months, and in some cases, years.
Excerpt from: Courtesy Legal News and Views, Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers
Also see Van O'Steen and Partners
Newsaic : Mirrow Law
Whoa...you better ease up on the fire-water, pilgrim.
"McFact #3: She initially tried to settle for $20,000 "
She was very greedy: it was her own mistake: McDonald's owed her nothing.
"McFact #5: Since the lawsuit, McDonald's has reduced the temperature of their coffee from 185 degrees to 158 degrees."
That is a bad thing. The coffee is too cold now: they get a lot of customer complaints about it.
" This is precisely why we have punitive damages."
No, this ia a textbook example of why we need tort reform so frivolous lawsuits like this never happen.
This way, if the Apache Foundation doesn't do the same with Geronimo, they can sue the cr@p out of them or they customers. Or may be, they just want BEA to buy them out? OK, that's a troll.
there's no place like ~
Been watching a little too much Strangers With Candy, methinks. It's hardly funny when they do it.
we wanted to change the word. but no.
anyway, surviving the georgewellian fuddite corepirate nazi life0cide is quite doable.
word is though, it's not going to 'just happen' without some more assertive intervention. the aforementioned greed/fear/ego based walking dead ARE leaving, it's just a matter of how soon, &/or, just how much more damage the creators will tolerate. you can continue to pretend if you must?
"Native Americans" is a myth. There were dozens of primitive tribes that often battled with each other when the first Europeans arrived. If the Europeans had taken another century to get here, more than likely the stronger groups would have grown enough to destroy the smaller ones. The Europeans acted no differently to them then they had to any group that had met before or after. (For example, circa 1600 B.C.E. when they arrived with their chariots in Babylon.) Some groups were friendly and some weren't on both sides. It wasn't until all of the native groups were all together in suffering that they put aside their differences to try to guilt their oppressors into making concessions.
As for the Apache specifically, they were a warrior tribe. Whether they could have come to terms with the Spaniards is now irrelevant. They fought with the Spaniards and the Comanche over territory and food, and the United States government acquired the fight when they acquired New Mexico. At that point negotiation may or may not have been possible - this page doesn't say if it was attempted and it took long enough to find this. In the end the military could either defeat them or be defeated, and the end was unavoidable.
The same thing happened repeatedly throughout history. The Goths, the ancient greeks, ancient Israel, all were harrassed and wiped out to varying degrees by other cultures. The "Native Americans" were not all full of greatness, and there are definitely groups that were treated shamefully. But there has hardly been a century in human history that doesn't have one (or usually more) group that was treated shamefully. To continue to browbeat others who weren't involved is selfish and self defeating. Millions of people have come to the U.S.A. to escape oppression, not to be accused of it.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
This wanker is just a troll. Check out his journal and mod the bastard down. You'll find that most if not all of his comments are actually lifted from others.
Stole their women and raped their horses!?
I think you got that backwards!
That, or the goatse guy has warped your mind...
1) To frighten the ignorant into purchasing support so that they are now indemnified.
2) To give news outlets another opportunity to mention the friction between JBoss and Geronimo. Though they outwardly state that it's been blown out of proportion, the very mention of it in the same press release has the insidious implication that if you choose Geronimo instead of JBoss, you won't be indemnified, and JBoss could come calling in the near future.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
The award was reduced to $480,000 by the Judge based on triple damages. McDonald's intended to appeal indefinetly, and they eventually settled out of court for "less than $600,000, but there are privacy clauses in the settlement."
The market average sure as hell should when the temperature they're selling it at causes 3rd Degree burns in 2-7 fucking seconds and the "Market average" takes over 20 seconds to cause burns that severe.
And what the HELL does this have to do with OJ?
So.. this is the new "hype word".. everywhere I go.. everything corporations are doing now are around "Indemnification".. what the fuck is wrong with this world?
STOP REPEATING "Indemnification".
Most people haven't noticed this stupid pattern. It's more or less like exotic surnames.. people LIKE to repeat them.. like it would make them cult.
STOP REPEATING "Indemnification".
The entire point of Open Source is to eliminate IP issues, not add to them! It's irrelevent as to whgat the dispute is, exactly, it's the fact that a dispute is even possible that is disturbing.
This is one reason I like clear-cut licenses such as the BSD or GPL. Any such lawsuit is, in and of itself, a violation of the license, in those cases. That is the sensible way of doing things. Either a person has intellectual freedom, or they don't.
There are also a few political consideration. Open Source is very much in the limelight right now, and political feuds are going to look positively bad, right about now. Timing-wise, this couldn't be worse.
On top of the SCO saga, this is going to fuel the FUD that Open Source is dangerous and liable to get users prosecuted at the drop of a hat.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm really confused.
JBoss has a J2EE implementation that they have licensed out under the LGPL. The Apache foundation has another, competing J2EE implementation, Geronimo, licensed under the Apache license (which is very similar to the BSD license?).
JBoss is accusing Geronimo of taking their code and putting it into Geronimo. This would obviously be a violation because the Apache license isn't LGPL compatible.
So it sounds like Geronimo should be indemnifying their users from legal action, not JBoss. Why would a JBoss customer need legal protection?
Fortunately this isn't another SCO situation where JBoss won't tell what code they think is infringed upon. The rebuttals available seem pretty thorough and it looks like someone at JBoss was poking through the Geronimo code and noticed some similarities and ran to the lawyers. They promptly said "Yep, this is the same. We're sending a letter." Of course, no one thought that there were standards for the naming schemes and capitalization or that possibly code was contributed to both projects by the same people.
Anyways, I'm still confused as to why JBoss customers need legal indemnification when JBoss is the aggressor in this situation.. ???
Just indemnify me from life.
This is nuts. Are they from Utah by any chance?
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
So what risk exactly do you inherit for using open source code?
Can it be copyright? Shouldn't only those people posting the code to the public be held accountable? Also, if someone is violating a copyright, are they not required to tell the violaters to stop before they can take legal action?
If there is an issue with a patent I still don't understand how end users of the open source code can be held liable. Wouldn't that be similar to Amazon suing every B&N customer for using one click?
Bottom line, I hear lots of talk of indemnity, but I'm not sure what it means.
-Nuke the moon
If you don't want to make a letter public, don't send it from lawyer. Generally, most people would consider a letter from a law firm concerning ip violations or any topic to be a threat. Now if Jboss had a dev trying to resolve this matter directly, it probably wouldn't have been a blip on the radar.
Second non-AC comment in the article, and it got modded "Redundant" ...
moderators on crack?
As you say, just like SCO.
For some time, I have suspected JBoss of being a Trojan Horse project.
JBoss kept loudly claiming that Sun was holding back the JBoss J2EE implementation, which was a lie. The only thing Sun was doing was refusing to certify it until JBoss followed the rules for certification (such as passing the compatibility tests).
JBoss kept insisting that Sun should compromise their certification rules in order to give JBoss a special break. But if Sun had done that, it would have simply opened up Sun to lawsuits from other certified J2EE providers, and it would have reduced the value of J2EE certification.
It seemed to me that JBoss was not actually trying to succeed.
Instead, it seemed to me that JBoss was doing everything they could to:
1. FUD Sun.
2. Reduce the value that Java provides for Sun.
3. Create fights between Sun and the Open Source community.
And now we have JBoss supporting SCO's ridiculous indemnification demand, and fudding Apache.
SCO wants Linux companies to indemnify Linux because it would give Microsoft the means to use threats and lawsuits to make Linux companies unprofitable, and thus put them out of business. Anyone can see that. The JBoss team can see it too, so what is their motive in supporting indemnification?
By the way, how is that fork of JBoss going? I was hoping that it would result in a version of JBoss run by people who are saner, and more friendly to Java and Linux.
Next time, try another source besides Vanfirm which likes to lie in the courtroom and file frivolous lawsuits.
There were 700 burn complaints out of tens of millions of cups of coffe sold at . Rather safe.
Taking from the American Heritage definition "... Apache tribes offered strong resistance to encroachment on their territory..." makes applying the name to server software a recognition of stalwart resolve against invasion. An attribution that could be viewed proudly as recognizing ancestors strengths becomes an affront to the closed-minded bigot who sees nothing but racism.
However, considering that that 'strong resistance,' was overcome makes the choice of the name less wise.
The potato it is uninformed.
The code in question (see the PDF attached to the Geronimo-mailing-list) involves extensions to another ASF project, Log4J, founded by Ceki Gulcu.
Here are his findings about the code snippets in question. In short, he notes that the code is actually his IP (the second example from the PDF is actually a user-contributed piece to log4j that predates the jboss examples in jboss' own cvs repository), example code he wrote as part of the log4j distribution and donated directly to the ASF and hence part of ASF (at most, his copyright first) before JBoss, LLC released it under the LGPL.
http://www.qos.ch/logging/jboss.html
I get it! I GET IT! Zarro Boogs found!
My parent post is no more off-topic than the harvard know-it-all's incorrect parent post, to which I responded.
You mods are on fucking crack. Besides, my comment was valid.
.sigs are for post^Hers.