Novell Offers Linux Users Legal Indemnity

Anonymous Coward writes "Novell today said it intends to indemnify its enterprise Linux users against possible legal action by The SCO Group and/or others. According to eWeek Novell's new Linux Indemnification Program is designed to provide its SUSE Enterprise Linux customers with protection against intellectual-property challenges to Linux and to help reduce the barriers to Linux adoption in the enterprise. Under the terms of the program, Novell will offer indemnification for copyright infringement claims made by third parties against registered Novell customers who obtain SUSE Enterprise Linux 8 after January 13, 2004, upgrade protection and a qualifying technical support contract from Novell or a Novell channel partner."

Comments

Only support subscribers

[thorgil]

The promise is only about new SUSE support subscribers.

Other indemnities

[tepples]

Yes there was a story a few hours ago about IBM and Intel offering some sort of indemnity, which SCO criticized. This story covers Novell.

If you claim that a few hours' delay is unacceptable, consider that the legal system typically doesn't move nearly as fast as technology.

Didn't SCO get a court order to....

[beforewisdom]

Was not a court order for SCO to present their "evidence" supposed to have come due today 1/12/04?

If so will not this issue be dieing soon..?

( assuming they really do not have a claim )

Steve

Re:Didn't SCO get a court order to....

[futuramarama]

As usual, check Groklaw for the lastest.

Seems that SCO did indeed submit (so we wait while IBM reads it).

Now its their turn to put a motion to compel discovery, asking for all modifications ever made by IBM to the System V source code.

It seems that if SCO doesn't give in (and its unlikely they will), they can drag this out for quite some time.

Re:Didn't SCO get a court order to....

[axlrosen]

Yes, but we won't know anything about it for a while:

"I have been seeing a lot of expectations about Monday, but personally, I don't expect to know much until the next court date on the 23rd, if SCO is being truthful and actually does turn over significant answers and documents. SCO may have media pronouncements to make, but IBM has to look over what they are given and evaluate it and that takes time. They aren't given to trying this case in the media, so my best guess is that our next event in the IBM matter will be the court hearing."

From Groklaw

Not indemnities

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM and Intel (as part of OSDN) offered 10 million dollars for use by end users for legal expenses. That's not indemnification. Indemnification is taking liability for another party and is something businesses don't like to do and is not really relevent since end users wouldn't have liability from simply running Linux unless they had patent infringing code in the kernel -- and SCO only own one patent, and that is not even relevent to the IBM lawsuit.

Re:Indemnity is sign of an already-successful atta

[LinuxMacWin]

It is not that Novell suddenly decided to indemnify because of FUD. If you read the article, it says that Novell expects to complete its purchase of SUSE Linux today. If Novell did not own SUSE earlier, it could not have offered the indemnity.

"Novell executives are also expected to announce on Monday that the SuSE deal has been completed. That will mean that SuSE's Linux distributions join the Novell family of products and allow Novell to offer customers a complete Linux-solution stack and global technical Linux support."

However, I understand your concern for the FUD maybe becoming successful, and maybe one of the reasons for indemnity.

Check the date of the merger!

[bstadil]

so it starts January 13th? otherwise you have to buy an 'upgrade package'?

Or maybe the fact that Novell does not acquire SuSe before 13'th Might have something to do with it. DUH!

The indemnification program will go into effect on Tuesday, the same day that Novell is expected to complete its $210 million acquisition of the German software company

Well...

[Kjella]

...since Novell still claims to be the copyright holder, doesn't that mean that *they* would get the money from any *copyright* lawsuit? Remember that the IBM case is all about breach of contract, not copyright. There is no "SCO IP" case. They've never filed for one. The only case they've filed is against IBM putting IBMs IP in SCO, in breach of a *contract* with SCO.

Kjella

Re:ARGGHHH...

[Flower]

That outcome is a "We'll see." IMHO. Eventually SCO and Novell are going to have to go at it in a courtroom to determine who owns what and what they can do with it.

Novell said "Don't you dare terminate IBM's license for AIX." and I haven't seen SCO put out anything saying they complied. Novell claims copyright to IP SCO requires to start suing end users (at least in their opinion.) and, in the press, SCO has basically accused Novell of a fraudulent filing. Both sides keep refering to one part of their contracts or another to "prove" they're right.

Both Novell and SCO keep drawing lines in the sand. Question is which one will file first?

SCO / Novell

[pontifier]

Kind of reminds me of the Selden/Ford battle in which George Selden threatened to sue anyone owning an automobile who didn't pay a licensing fee. Ford ensured that ford owners would be protected.

Selden/Ford

Re:Are you people happy with nothing?

[ducomputergeek]

I love it when two bit whiny geeks with no experience in the business world post this stuff. I know because I've been doing work with medium sized companies, like 100 employees or so, that have been looking at Linux and its something they have to consider.

Especially at the smaller end of the scale where you'll meet the most resistance from people. The most common arguement I hear is, "At least with Microsoft, if they would get sued, its their Ass, not mine". And its pretty damn hard to combat that mentality because I agree with them.

Without the support of people like IBM, HP, and Novell, Linux would have remained in the hands of "elitest nerdy smucks" as three dead trolls in a baggie once said.