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Perens Talks About Open Source Risk Management

Posted by Hemos on from the more-fun-then-roulette dept.

Big Sav writes "Here is a quick but good interview with Bruce Perens. It also raises the topic of indemnification vis a vis the SCO court case " Interesting interview - talks about Peren's new Open Source Risk Management company.

2 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. erm... by mirko · · Score: 5, Insightful
    About the legal problems small users might face due to the SCO hype :
    With small users, I don't think there's a problem. I don't think they're visible enough.


    What if SCO choose to attack them like the ??AA went to war against p2p users ?
    Small users cannot afford lawyers, after all...
    --
    Trolling using another account since 2005.
  2. What is risk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Most people think that risk is "probability of bad outcome weighted by cost of bad outcome", or somthing like that. It's not, because in a market, "price" reflects all probabilities and weightings, i.e. price is the "expected value".

    Risk is properly measured by the variance in possible outcomes, the amount of "spread" around the expected value, and probability does not enter into that.

    Risk has a value because every extra dollar you add to your wealth is worth less to you than the one that came before. So, upward "wins" in the variance are worth less than downward "losses", i.e. you should be willing to pay to eliminate risk, to shrink your variance.

    So, the economic "risk" of the SCO lawsuit exists with regard to the spread in possible outcomes, and has nothing to do with their probabilities. The value of insurance to you is based on your economic activity and your risk aversion.

    Insurance will increase the spread of Linux, not decrease it.

    Perens is capitalizing on his name, not on the FUD, since the article doesn't reflect that he understands risk in detail.