Open-Source Insurance

* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us that several insurance agencies have formed a partnership to offer open-source compliance insurance. From the article: " The insurance will cover up to $10 million in damages, including profit losses related to noncompliance with an open-source software license. The policy could, in some cases, cover the cost of repairing code that was found to infringe on open-source licenses such as the General Public License, which is used with the Linux operating system."

Comments

Then and now

[Flyboy Connor]

Then: Big company thinks of stealing open source code for their products, but refrain because they are afraid of legal consequences.

Intermediate: Insurance company knows that no open source developer has the money to sue, even if they would be able to discover that their code had been stolen.

Now: Big company tajes insurance and starts stealing open source code, because they feel there is no legal risk anymore.

In the end: Open source developers get screwed once again and the only people getting rich over it are the lawyers. Nothing new here.

Arabian Camel Trains

[rheotaxis]

The merchants in camel trains would each pool a little bit of money to cover the loss of any one trader's camel and goods. If no one lost any goods, the money was returned to each merchant. Today's insurance companies don't return your money if no one ever files a claim. What's up with that?

Re:Arabian Camel Trains

[Brushfireb]

You are technically correct, but not complete.

Really, you pay the insurance company to assume a small portion of risk, the rest of your payment goes to other larger insurance companies to re-insure the company you pay to, and anything left over goes towards litigation of claims and lawyers.

The real problem with Insurance companies is that they have so much clout in the legal system and political system, that its virtually impossible for new insurance companies to enter the fray. Its a market without REAL competition on the backend. And of course, in the US, its ILLEGAL to have a not-for-profit insurance company (even though, thats the most logical type of insurance -- purely not-for profit aggregation of risk). I'll let you guess why? Nothing logical, they just paid millions to lobby for it.

Insurance these days is less about providing real risk transfer or risk aggregation, and more about supporting the beast and providing subsidization between companies and insurance products. I wont even touch on Healthcare insurance, becuase thats EVEN WORSE.

B

Re:Arabian Camel Trains

[Kjella]

Really, you pay the insurance company to assume a small portion of risk, the rest of your payment goes to other larger insurance companies to re-insure the company you pay to, and anything left over goes towards litigation of claims and lawyers.

This isn't exactly new. If we keep it up with the OP, reinsurance would be bunch of camel trading groups getting together, so if one group got hit by horrible weather and many in their group died, they'd claim against the whole co-op. It has to work this way. Imagine being a south-asian insurance company without reinsurance when the tsunami hit, they'd have to file for bankrupcy immidiately and hardly anyone would get their claim. The rest? "Well you camel was old and weak" "You didn't treat that wound properly, it's your fault it got infected". There's alwsys trouble like that, and perhaps even insurance fraud (making sure it dies on a well-insured trip).

Around here there's no law against non-profit insurance companies, but all the major ones are commercial. I mostly prefer it that way, because they have the right incentive to make sure every claim is legitimate and that people pay according to the risk they contribute (every customer should be "profitable", on average). There are some bad with the good, but overall I think a non-profit company would be relying too much on honesty and solidarity to deal with people abusing the system.

Yeah... No...

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't too long ago that some source code for Windows was stolen/leaked, and all the major OSS players recommended to their devs that they AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS.

Not because they were worried that the devs would intentionally steal the code, but because they were worried that they'd read something clever, store it in the back of their minds, and then use something similar UNINTENTIONALLY to solve some OSS problem.

Why should the other way be any different?

Shit happens. That's why people buy insurance.

Re:Yeah... No...

[LordLucless]

because they were worried that they'd read something clever, store it in the back of their minds, and then use something similar UNINTENTIONALLY to solve some OSS problem.

That wouldn't be infringing copyright. Looking at code, seeing how an algorithm works, then reproducing that algorithm is not an infringement of copyright. It would be an infringement of a patent on that algorithm, if it was patented. But copyright only impacts code that is identical to the original - not code that runs along the same lines.

That said, Im guessing the Open Source project managers recommended their developers avoid the code, not because they were worried about their developers *actually* committing copyright infringement, but because they were worried that Microsoft would *accuse* them of copyright infringement, and they'd then have to spend bucketloads defending themselves.