Slashdot Mirror
OSRM Declares Linux Free of Copyright Violations
tmu writes "According to a recent press release, the Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels are free of any code that violate copyrights. OSRM, the new startup formed by Daniel Egger and including groklaw founder Pamela Jones, completed a 6-month review of all code in both kernels. They must be pretty confident of the results, because they're offering product liability insurance to both developers and users."
Groklaw's running a more detailed piece that gives more information than in the press release. This basically ammounts to a reporter reporting about herself, but that also makes it information straight from the source.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
You have it backwards: They're offering insurance because they're that sure they're right. If they were worried they were wrong, then they'd be worried about having to actually pay claims and wouldn't be so willing to offer the insurance.
Essentially they're trying to call SCO's bluff.
For those that are saying the insurance ends up costing more than SCO's licensing... I'm pretty sure SCO's license fees are for one copy of Linux, not all the copies you want.
I think they're offering insurance for a company, not per copy of Linux you're using. Hence if you're a big company using 500+ copies of Linux... $250/year is nothing compared to the $300k licensing fee charge SCO could try to hit you with.
If I read the article correctly this is not a per cpu protection license. SCO wants to lighten your pocket book by $699/per CPU. This coverage is a lump sum with protection up to the amount x you feel comfortable. Big difference.
I'm not sure how they can come to that conclusion without having access to the code which SCO is claiming that they have which was inapproprately added into the Linux kernels.
if you read the article, you would have seen that they traced the roots of all the code (be it bsd/pd or the credited author) and are basing their opinion on that research. They feel they have "sourced" all the source.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Others have stated this already, but just to clarify: all insurance companies reinsure their policies, and it goes especially for areas that tend to be all-or-nothing.
Take a southern California or Tokyo-region real estate insurance company - they're in the same kind of boat. One big earthquake and they are up a very narrow creek with nary a paddle in sight. So what they do is insure their claims in turn in other companies; preferably companies that have little or no other exposure to the same risks. And of course, thiscompany would be a reinsurer for other comapnies as well.
For the risk-taking company, it is a way to dilute risk; rather than, as you say, have either a huge windfall or a total disaster every year, you try to arrange for a reasonable profit every year, rather than just on average.
For the reinsurer, this is another way to dilute risk, and get in on an area in which you have no expertise of your own; from this perspective, the spread between what the company pays you and what they take in from the original insurees is the payment they get for being the expert in the area so you don't have to. A northern European insurance company does not have much in-house expertise on north American earthquakes or their precise effect on real estate holdings, and they would not attract enough business to make it worthwhile, but by reinsuring a California company they get into that business, while relying on that company to do a far better risk assessment than they could do themselves.
The problems occur, of course, if enough things (like natural disasters) happen in a short enough time frame; that can bring _every_ insurance company into trouble, even companies that at first glance have nothing to do with it. You may see your car insurance rise 20% because of flooding in south China, a hurricane off the coast of Florida and a medium-scale earthquake in Hokkaido in the same year.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Depends if you mean sued as in 'successfully sued', or just the initiation of the process, and if you believe your nation's legal system is just and fair.
Even "unsuccessfully sued" can cost someone a hell of a lot of money. Have you seen how long some of these cases can drag out? It costs money just to defend yourself. And if you successfully defend yourself, you still have to launch your own counter-suit if you want to reclaim any of those losses.
While insurance seems of little use to most people, I can see some companies thinking it's a worthwhile investment.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
RTFA shows that they're shopping around for reinsurance companies.
Do you know what reinsurance is?
What happens is that OSRM will insure FooCo for, say, $10 billion. Of that, OSRM only covers up to $1M. Most claims are going to be in that small range. Small claims are covered by FooCo, who has a $5k deductible on their policy. (FooCo will have very high premiums with such a low deductible.)
OSRM sells the rest of the liability off to reinsurance companies in various tiers. Reinsurance A covers the next $19M. Reinsurance B covers the next $80M. Reinsurance C covers the last $9 billion.
Let's say FooCo loses a liability lawsuit to SCO. (Won't happen, but we're in la-la land even talking about liability for Linux, so play along.) The judgment is for $25 million, and FooCo decides not to appeal, because they're covered!
Out of the check FooCo writes to SCO, $5k comes from FooCo themselves, and the other $24,995,000 comes from OSRM.
But before OSRM writes that check, they get a check from Reinsurance A for $19 million dollars. OSRM also gets a check from Reinsurance B for $4,995,000. OSRM covers the remaining $1M themselves -- that's OSRM's deductible. The judgment has to be for over $1 billion before Reinsurance C even gets involved; it wasn't in this imaginary wet dream stolen from Darl's happiest hour, so Reinsurance C does nothing.
So OSRM is only out $1M, minus the premiums they paid to Reinsurance A, B, and C.
So that's how it works. OSRM's little press release today is to help attract reinsurance companies -- to show them how safe their investment is. ("Hey, it's FREE MONEY!") OSRM will still get customers, no matter how safe Linux is, because most businesses live by the motto "Cover Your Posterior."
Linux is not public domain, Linux is licenced under the GNU GPL, but all contributors to Linux keep their copyrights. So Linux being placed in the public domain would NOT be a win. now saying that the code in Linux apears to be properly contributed would be.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
I'll bite, despite your insinuation that I haven't read more than the Slashdot summaries of SCO news. I've read virtually every SCO story in the news for the last year plus, including painful stories on Groklaw, so I think I know my stuff for the most part.
So you know - the "shreds' of evidence you refer to took almost a year for SCO to produce, hardly "offered" as much as produced under pressure. Also, it was references to header files and standard error files - hardly unique, and in other places, code that could, within hours, be attributed to other sources. If there were really offending code, SCO could have tried to get someone with some sort credibility in the Linux community to sign an NDA in the first place, not start out by deceiving the public with the "MIT math team" or whatever it was they claimed - a dept MIT claims has never existed.
What about the fact that the coverage they are offering is already available from most of the largest E&O providers in the market (AIG, ACE, Hiscox, Chubb, Zurich, CNA, etc.) 1. cheaper 2. with higher limits 3. with more experienced claims handling staff 4. not tied to specific best practices and techniques (without which coverage does not attach) and 5. as part of a larger E&O program that will provide more coverage for the more likely problems - bugs.
Seriously, this is really just a lot of fluff at this point. $100k in defense costs and $1m in limits is nothing for large companies that buy $50m - $100m liability towers, and a small company looking for coverage can buy $1m in limits (including software copyright) for a lot less than $30k.
And for the record, Bruce, reinsurance is not a great answer. Just look at the problems the London markets are having getting Swiss Re to pay their claims. For a small, poorly capitalized company like OSRM, more than 3 or 4 losses (which their adverse selection will guarantee) will leave them cash flow negative, unable to continue functioning while they wait for the reinsurers to cut a check.
Well, in some cases (earthquake coverare, for instance) even getting it statistically completely right would make the system nonworkable. You may know exactly how likely that earthquake is and how much damage it can do, and yet you can't offer insurance since if it happens you'll be out of business, period.
It's not front- or backwards; it goes both ways. The primary insurer and the reinsurer has different reasons to participate. It really is just different viewpoints on the same thing.
Oh, and BTW, I was not implying that those insurance companies does not know about property insurance, but only that they would not find it worthwhile to accumulate deep, local expertise for the sake of just a few customers.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
-
Their stock is in a screaming dive. Closed at $7.77 today, down from $22 at peak.
-
Their VCs want their money back.
-
Before they can sue Linux users over copyright violations, they have to beat IBM and Novell and Red Hat and Damlier-Chrysler or AutoZone.
-
They're losing against IBM, and the other suits aren't going anywhere yet.
-
IBM's law firm is Cravath, the big hammer of corporate litigation. Cravath puts huge teams of lawyers on the job and has an organized process for not missing anything and not making mistakes.
Nobody wins a weak suit against Cravath.
-
SCO has never sued a Linux user that didn't have a previous contract with SCO. If they try, any such suit can be stalled until the big lawsuits are settled, for the same reason the Red Hat lawsuit is on hold.
-
Because SCO has been sueing their own customers, it's dangerous to become an SCO customer. SCO sales have thus tanked.
So there.Urban Legend or just Apocryphal, the story goes Bill Gates was playing $3-$6 Texas Hold'em at the Mirage Casino in Las Vegas in the early 90's. Seeing Doyle Brunson, 2 time World Series of NL Hold'em Poker, playing $2000-$4000 Hold'em in the upper section, Bill Gates had a lacky go buy Doyle Brunson's book -- Super System, co-authored by David Sklansky, Mike Caro, Chip Reese, and Bobby Baldwin (current casino mananger of Mirage). He [Gates] then sent the lacky over to get the book autographed. Doyle Brunson is reported to have said something like: "If the richest man in the world doesn't have the guts to come over and play me, I'm certainly not going to give him my autograph".
Oh, and as for Linux 2.4 and 2.6 insurance -- is this implicitly admitting that SCO actually has a case against 2.5?
If this was poker, OSRM is basically telling the table that SCO's hand is a 5-high. :)
Isn't the lowest possible hand a 7-high? You can't pick five cards lower than a seven without getting a pair or a straight.
Of course, the real deal here is that they don't have a hand.
--
"Seven-high beats no cards."
You seem to think that if SCO wins a case, they're going to own Linux. That's not very likely. If IBM contributed SCO's code to Linux, that's between IBM and SCO: IBM would have to pay loads of money to SCO for damages, and the code would have to be removed. If IBM contributed their own code to Linux in breach of contract with SCO, IBM would have to pay SCO money, and Linux users could care less. They don't have contractual relations with SCO, neither with IBM.
SCO's claims would be ridiculus, even if they were based on truth.
IBM didn't write Linux completely by themselves, but contributed some rather big parts. Instead of using the usual allegory with a car, consider it this way: You have done a huge research project, citing many sources. Now one of these sources is shown to be plagiary. Does that mean your research now belongs to the person that has been plagiarised?
My point is: A judge would have to be seriously fucked up to give away the work of other people because of some related person's wrong-doing. In no way has SCO the right to $699 for every copy of Linux shipped, and I think even SCO understands that. $699 is worth a lot in imaginary returns for speculants^W investors, though.
I think a ruling stating that there is no difinitive evidence that there is offending code in linux and that all the code in Linux belongs in the public domain would not be unreasonable.
Except for one small, leetle teensie problem. Linux isn't in the public domain now. Never was.
Hopefully, it never will be.
See, there's this thing, called the GPL. It's a license. A license is a legal mechanism (usually based on contract or some other terms and conditions) that allows you to do something that's otherwise not permitted or is illegal.
For example, there's a driver's license. It's generally illegal to drive - unless you have a license.
Similarly, it's a violation of various statutes to use software developed by somebody else without their permission.
Software in the "public domain" is owned by everybody (and nobody) and you can do whatever you like with "public domain" software.
However, Linux is NOT in the public domain. Linux is a hopelessly tangled mess of software ownership that would be a train wreck if it weren't for the fact that it's licensed (there's that word again!) under the GPL.
Let's hope that Linux stays semi-free - as the real "free" is what killed Unix!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.