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Linux Vendors Move to Protect
Customers
OSDL
starts legal fund while Novell indemnifies SUSE users
By Yvonne L.
Lee
February 1, 2004 — Linux
vendors made a pre-emptive strike in January, offering legal help to
end users that The SCO Group may attempt to sue for copyright
infringement.
The
Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) announced plans for a US$10
million fund to help defray legal expenses of Linux users involved
in litigation with SCO. IBM Corp., Intel Corp. and MontaVista
Software Inc. have already contributed an initial $3 million. The
fund is separate from the Open Source Now fund, which Red Hat Inc.
established with $1 million in August 2003 to help defend Linux
developers.
“OSDL has been talking with its members and core
Linux developers for some time about the best way to help customers
deploying Linux have more peace of mind in the face of escalating
SCO attacks against Linux users,” said Nelson Pratt, OSDL director
of marketing. “Companies on OSDL’s Linux User Advisory Council were
not individually concerned about SCO legal attacks, but they thought
this would be a good way to help other companies who might be
concerned to feel more confident.”
Separately, Novell Inc.
announced that it would indemnify SUSE Linux against intellectual
property challenges.
In November 2003, SCO announced that it
would be filing copyright infringement suits against enterprise
Linux users within 90 days. If the Lindon, Utah, company held true
to this threat, such suits would be filed by mid-February. SCO has
reiterated its intention of filing suits in that time
frame.
The OSDL fund could thwart any future suits by SCO,
according to John Ferrell, head of the intellectual property
practice at the Palo Alto, Calif., law firm Carr & Ferrell LLP.
It also takes away SCO’s ability to hire a firm on a contingency
basis, he said. “If you know that you’re basically fighting a legal
fund of $10 million, you’re going to have to put up $10 million of
your own,” Ferrell said. “Ten million is a huge amount of money for
a law firm.”
The contribution to the OSDL legal defense fund
is the first time Intel has stepped into the fray in SCO’s assault
on Linux. Both Linux and Unix run on Intel’s processors. The Santa
Clara-based company, which is part of the OSDL board, decided to
contribute because it and its customers could be the target of
suits, according to company spokesman Chuck Mulloy.
“We’ve
received a letter because we do use Linux in our IT systems,” Mulloy
said. “Our customers and many of their customers have also received
letters.”
Also part of the equation was SCO’s refusal to give
specific details of how and where it believed its intellectual
property rights were infringed.
“By refusing to disclose the
basis of the claims, they’re preventing the Linux community from
remedying the potential infringement,” said Mulloy. “There’s a
fundamental fairness issue in terms of where’s the infringement and
how can it be fixed.”
Embedded systems software maker
MontaVista also said it has been approached by embedded device
manufacturers asking whether to pay the $32 per device that SCO has
sought from embedded Linux users.
“If you build embedded
devices based on embedded Linux, and you’re all of a sudden told you
have to pay a $32 per-unit fee or redeploy, in some ways the worry’s
even greater for the enterprise,” said MontaVista’s director of
strategic marketing, Bill Weinberg.
SCO charges US$699 per
processor for the enterprise license.
In SCO’s official
response, president and CEO Darl McBride said, “If vendors feel so
confident with the intellectual property foundation under their
massive contributions into Linux, then they should put their money
where their mouth is and protect end users with true vendor-based
indemnification.”
Novell then said it would indemnify
customers who bought SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and who after
Jan. 12 obtain upgrade protection and a qualifying technical support
contract from Novell or from a participating Novell or SUSE Linux
partner.
IBM has not indemnified its customers. “IBM’s
working with customers on a case-by-case basis,” said company
spokesperson Trink Guarino, adding that IBM is the only company that
has been sued so far.
In related news, SCO expanded its
Intellectual Property License for Linux to international customers.
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