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Lloyds of London to Offer Open Source Insurance
darkworm writes "Lloyds of London, the world's oldest insurance house, is to offer indemnification for IP litigation worldwide according to the Channel Register: 'Lloyd's of London is close to offering independent insurance protection worldwide against potential IP litigation involving Linux and open source software. The financial services giant has agreed to take on the risk associated with open source, and is finalizing arrangements to work through Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) who will become Lloyd's sole U.S. representative.'"
...an insurance company, it provides a market place where several companies (or syndicates) can sell insurance.
It was interesting. When I saw that lloyds was offering this I was surprised, as I thought they'd almost been bankrupted in the past.
Their main website and about us timeline make no mention of any major financial issues (were covered by Time / BW etc at the time).
A little digging of course did turn up an interesting read.
http://www.truthaboutlloyds.com/fraud.html
Still, nice to see insurance coming out for this type of thing. Hopefully some more players get involved in the future.
" This probably spells the end for that organization that PJ of Groklaw fame used to work for, OSRM that offered a similar product."
I've seen you post insightful comments in the past so I don't think this is a troll, but doesn't the article summary state that OSRM will be the sole insurance agent for Lloyd's in the US? I'm sure if people are worried about buying only from the Big Names, OSRM will be OSRM: Backed by Lloyd's of Lodon!
OSRM will assess both the risk of the software in use and the individual company, before passing on the risk to the appropriate insurance company on the Lloyds market. OSRM expects to announce the first customers this Fall, and will initially charge organizations $60 per server.
As the article summary indicates, OSRM is going to be the US agent for the insurance. Some arrangement like this was more or less inevitable if OSRM's insurance concept was going to work. OSRM itself almost certainly doesn't have the resources (read, deep pockets) to underwrite the coverage.
Or would the insurance company put up a good fight in court and maybe make suing companies that use Linux uneconomical?
That is what Lloyds is offering to do -- for a fee. And they're betting that, on avareage, people who are worried about being sued will pay them more than they'll loose from paying settlements and/or fighting court battles.
In other words, Lloyds has confidence that defending Open Source will Make Them Money.
As a Libertarian who grew up in a small business, and a Linux geek, I think that rock!
That's called "insurance fraud." It's usually highly illegal. It's also not unusual at all for individuals and groups to try their luck at getting away with it. Believe me, I'm sure they've taken a good look at what they're getting into.