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Startup to Offer Open Source Insurance
ThePretender writes "From the Infoworld article, 'Open Source Risk Management LLC (OSRM), a startup company that last month hired Pamela Jones, editor of the popular Groklaw.net Web site, as director of litigation risk research, plans to soon begin offering insurance policies to companies using open source software but fear that they may be sued, according to a company spokeswoman'. What's next - Developers having to pick up 'code malpractice' insurance? Egads." Might as well get some alien abduction insurance while you're at it.
This summer I had the opportunity to work for BlackDuckSoftware.com. Black Duck has built software to help developers (from individuals to large corporations) manage their use of open source software. Essentially, the software enables firms to track the usage of open source code, determine conflicts (if any) and suggest methods of compliance. It takes into account methods of combining code, whether the code is for internal use or public distribution, any number of other considerations that involve open source license compliance. It is able to deal with code licensed under *all* of the certified open source licenses as well as many other proprietary licenses.
While it is not insurance, and does not provide any kind of indemnification, it is a damn good management tool. Its goal is to allow companies to make use of open source code in such a way that full compliance is facilitated, and to avoid any uh-oh moments that happen after code is commerically released.
I worked on the development of the license interpretation module. It involved reading (and re-reading) 50+ licenses and parsing their terms such that compatibility determinations and compliance requirements could be generated for every possible combination of license, code, distribution, concatenation, link, modularization, etc. of a software product. It was exhausting (and sometimes tedious) work, and it certainly made it easy to tell which licenses were written by lawyers, which by coders, and which were written with input from both. It gave me new understanding of why unenlightened legal departments sometimes shy away from open source. Nonetheless, the reality is these licenses exist, are in use today, and are all valid until some court says otherwise. Licensors (i.e. coders in the community) have every right to expect their terms to be adhered to.
Being a geek myself, and a law student, it was pretty gratifying to see that a company wanted to build a product that helped managers to understand and not fear the open source phenomenon. Further, I think the product will really help firms stay fully compliant when they decide to use open source code. And that, in the end, is all our community can ask for.
cleetus