Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Red Hat's Open Source Assurance Program

Posted by michael on from the safety-blanket dept.

scubacuda writes "ZDnet and others report that Red Hat now offers the 'Open Source Assurance Program' as protection for customers if they get hit with a copyright infringement case from the SCO Group. From their website: 'A key feature of the Open Source Assurance Program is an Intellectual Property Warranty. The warranty ensures, that in the event that an infringement issue is identified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux software code, Red Hat will replace the infringing code. Red Hat's warranty assures customers that they can use Red Hat Enterprise Linux and related solutions without interruption. The warranty is available for all customers having a valid registered subscription to Red Hat Enterprise Linux or related solutions.'" Following close behind Novell and Hewlett-Packard, but it looks like Red Hat is not actually indemnifying their customers like Novell and HP, but rather is simply promising to fix any real copyright problems moving forward, which is something I think we would assume they would do in any case.

3 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Money? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    So this doesn't indemnify? Sounds like they offer to fix the code and it will give you access to the pool of money to help out (which won't last long if the bad news comes.)

    Am I missing something here?

  2. Re:RedHat QNX by Woody77 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Realtime doesn't mean fast. It means deterministic. It means that you can determine, that without a doubt, that A will happen within X amount of time after B.

    The (few) deterministic systems that I've seen have all been slower than their non-deterministic counterparts. Things have to managed very differently.

  3. Re:Replace the code? by bro1 · · Score: 1, Informative
    What use is that? When the SCO case really holds up, the issue is not to replace the code but to pay them their royalties.

    Why would a 3rd party have to pay? If there were an infriging code in Linux kernel this would just mean that:

    1. IBM or whoever inserted the code would have to deal with SCO
    2. Infriging code would have to be removed from Linux kernel and replaced with new one
    3. A company which does not upgrade to the new untainted version of Linux would have to pay royalties