InformationWeek > Linux > HP's Big Bet > September 29, 2003

Linux
Under Lock & Key:

Comment: This InformationWeek article
champions HP's offer to indemnify HP Linux customers in response to
SCO threats. Well gee whiz, SCO also champions HP's offer and
wonders what the other Linux distros are waiting for. To me the HP
indemnification strips Linux users of all the open source “GPL”
attributes that make Linux so much better than proprietary
alternatives. HP strips out the GPL by repackaging the code under
their indemnification terms. Leaving users with Linux the operating
system ~ application host, but dependent on HP. No thanks. This is
a shallow scheme to destroy the GPL, and all the open source
communities dependent upon GPL protection. A protection from
proprietary companies bent on raping, pillaging, and plundering the
bloom of open source community efforts.

Linux with hand cuffs? You have to ask yourself
why SCO is urging Linux distributors to “indemnify” their
customers the same way HP has.

Why would SCO compliment HP for properly
protecting their customers, and in the same breath diss IBM who has
legally taken SCO to task and is defending in court the provisions of
the GPL? Something is rotten in Utah, and InformationWeek has bought
into the stink.

The HP indemnification strips the open source
freedoms from Linux, leaving HP users with a proprietary packaging
putting HP in control of Linux based information infrastructures. No
wonder SCO and Sun are rushing o indemnify. These companies are
hemorrhaging. UNiX shops are embracing Linux at the low ends of their
enterprise stacks, and the cabal of SCO, HP and Sun fully realize
that there is no way to box in Linux unless they can lock up user
access to the source code. In that way they can control the
implementation and integration interfaces so critical to keeping the
money train of their costly UNiX solutions rolling.

The simple truth is that for proprietary vendors,
the GPL transfers to users more than just the source code. It
transfers control. Control over the future of their information
systems.

Someone correct me if i'm wrong here, but the
issue of indemnification, phony as it is, is based on the thinking
that Linux users are concerned about being caught up in the SCO
extortion scheme. Indemnification from SCO extortion comes by way of
a warranty stating that the Linux distro provider will cover legal
and licensing expenses. Of course this would make it easy for SCO to
coerce protection fees. This is an easy decision for bean counters
to make. The effect of this is to officially sanction extortion for
the use of open source community efforts.

Your article makes the incredible insinuation that
somehow this legal indemnification is common with all proprietary
licenses, in stark contrast to the GPL. “.......... While it's
common for makers of proprietary software to protect customers from
intellectual-property infringement claims, such protection hasn't
been offered with open source because the software's lineage isn't as
clear cut, says Melise Blakeslee, a partner with law firm McDermott,
Will & Emery. With open source, she says, users are getting the
software "as is." HP's offer to take responsibility for any
SCO Group claims will likely reassure customers, Blakeslee
says........”

What a load of crap! It is not “common for
makers of proprietary software to protect customers from
intellectual-property infringement claims” beyond the purchase
price of the software! There is simply no equivalence between the
purchase cost refund “protection” proprietary vendors
warrant in their EULA's, and the legal – extortion licensing
scheme SCO, HP, Microsoft and Sun have hung on the GPL Linux
indemnification issue. Who in their right mind would call the
common EULA “indemnification”? Oh yeah. There are those
who seek to so totally confuse everyone so that they stop asking
questions about saving money, complying with open standards,
demanding open interfaces, and seeking end to end integration of the
many costly but disconnected sub systems that comprise their
information infrastructure.

~ge~