Fighting SCO liability FUD

[Alan Dayley]

A significant amount of time at last night's meeting was used reviewing and discussing the whole SCO vs. IBM (and everything Linux) mess.  I will not rehash all of that here.

However, one of the things to come out of this is the lingering FUD around Linux user liability.  A company leader may point to the SCO situation and say that they cannot use Linux or Free Software or Open Source Software because they might be liable for unknowingly using copyrighted or patented code.  This is a valid business concern.

To fight this FUD we can point out that using closed source products are no guarantee that there is less chance of liability.  Just read the end user license agreement of most any software.  The user releases the vendor from any liability.  This however is not enough to convince some that FS/OSS is not more risky.  That's when you pull out an real good example.

Microsoft vs. TimeLine.  Derek mentioned this at the meeting and I went googling.  Not hard to find the information on this suit.  Bottomline: MS lost the suit and TimeLine is now going after MS SQL Server USERS for royalty payments on TimeLine's patented methods that are in SQL Server 7 and above.

Closed source software is NOT any "safer" than FS/OSS.

Related links:
http://www.tmln.com/press.htm
http://www.analyst-financials.com/News&Events/news%2005-03-02.htm     http://www.control.com/1026168741/index_html
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-985359.html?tag=fd_top
http://theregister.co.uk/content/53/29419.html

Alan