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The Courts Government Java Programming News

JBoss Offers Lawsuit Indemnification 112

Posted by simoniker from the protected-shielded-sorted- dept.
prostoalex writes "JBoss Group offered its customers indemnification from potential legal problems related to patent violations and copyright lawsuits. According to Bob Bickel, JBoss VP, the move is intended to give customers more peace of mind when deciding whether to go with open-source software." The article also mentions Jboss' legal challenge to Apache Geronimo, of which Bickel said "...the letter to the Apache Software Foundation was never intended to be made public and said the conflict has been blown out of proportion."
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JBoss Offers Lawsuit Indemnification More

JBoss Offers Lawsuit Indemnification

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  • Empty offers.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Monday November 17, 2003 @03:02PM (#7495465) Homepage Journal
    Indemnification from who and what exactly? That's like offering supernova insurance, only suckers will buy.

    • Re:Empty offers.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @03:08PM (#7495519) Homepage
      That's like offering supernova insurance, only suckers will buy.

      Sure, you say that, but I'll be laughing all the way to the bank the next time our sun explodes.

      • Legal insurance, eh? Well, why not. They're customers. Not that the customers should get sued in the first place, but our (Americas) system is flawed. Also, the jBoss Geronimo issue is blown out of proportion. But only by people not involved with either side. Geronimo is working with jBoss to remove all offending code. Look for one second at the apache incubator mailing list and you will see that is blatantly obvious.

    • Re:Empty offers.. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Does anybody know where I can get a good rate on supernova insurance? I'm currently paying $350 USD a month for full nova and supernova coverage, but I think I could do better. Plus, I'm a sitting duck when it comes to black holes.

    • Re:Empty offers.. (Score:4, Funny)

      by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda@nOSpAM.etoyoc.com> on Monday November 17, 2003 @03:13PM (#7495569) Homepage Journal
      Hey, that's required in the Beatelguis system! I was going to buy a summer place out there, but between the commute and the cost of insurance it was out of the question.

      I'd laugh but my great grandfather had a place out where the crab nebula is now. It had some lovely blue siding. It blew all over the fricken place.

    • Re:Empty offers.. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This isn't about buying anything. They are saying that if somebody comes along and sues them over copyright or patent issues the end user will not be held liable. This is the same thing that IBM is doing with SCO. Obviously they are only doing this for their customers (who are paying for a service contract).
    • But with current worries over the legality of Linux and validity of Open-Source licensing, it's not an empty off, at least from a PR perspective.

      I think that the fact that JBoss felt the need to announce such a decision just shows that the OS movement is indeed feeling the heat from SCO's lawsuits/FUD/etc, and that action definately needs to be taken against them. Class-action comes to mind, is JBoss in with those standing off against SCO, the more the merrier.
      • If JBoss could show that they've lost customers because of concerns caused by SCO, they could file a lawsuit.

        And I'd say, let them. The more, the better. Get SCO so tied up in several different court cases, their lawyers will drain their funds long before a settlement is reached.

      • But with current worries over the legality of Linux and validity of Open-Source licensing, it's not an empty off, at least from a PR perspective.

        I hope you don't mean the current issue with SCO. To date, they haven't even alleged specific infringements in Linux. All that's happened is a bunch bunch of hot air. Also, OS licensing is quite a bit simpler and more equitable than the licneses I've seen from the likes of Microsoft and Adobe.

        • All that's happened is a bunch bunch of hot air

          Smoke and mirrors, but even smoke can scare some people into thinking there's a fire. In this case, SCO has nothing, but their posturing is scaring some companies into believing they do.

  • Just like SCO! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This whole "Pay us and you won't be sued" thing sure sounds like white-collar extortion to me.

    • Re:Just like SCO! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This whole "Pay us and you won't be sued" thing sure sounds like white-collar extortion to me.

      Slow down and read it again.

      They aren't charging anything for idemnification. Even if they did, it wouldn't be anything remotely like SCO. SCO is the one doing the suing. Companies like IBM and HP are protecting their customers from SCO. A more apt analogy would compare JBoss to IBM or HP in this case.

    • Re:Just like SCO! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As of this afternoon, SCO's stock is at the lowest point since the middle of august.

      I think it's about time for them to say something silly again

    • Re:Just like SCO! (Score:3, Informative)

      by molarmass192 ( 608071 )
      Did you read the article??? They're not threatening to sue anybody. They're offering to indemnify their customers in the event that JBoss code is found to to infringe on patents or copyrights. They're doing to same thing HP did with it's Linux customers here [slashdot.org]. If customers want it, it's available. JBoss isn't the one who'd be doing the suing.
  • ...but is it a good or bad one?

    It mollifies fears about switching to open-source software, but it does leave projects without a financial backing out in the cold.

  • not copied? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by tarzan353 ( 246515 )
    You're assuming by "copying" he means "cut and paste." Not at all. Copying could be somebody who read the JBoss code (which is open, and pretty good. I read quite a bit of it myself trying to decide whether it was a viable alternative to the ghastly expensive BEA WebSphere) writing identical functions for Geronimo. A bit like aspiring artists copying a famous painting, only much more illegal. Alternatively, it could be some well meaning developer thinking that "clean room" just means he has to retype it.

    I'

  • Perception (Score:2, Insightful)

    by panxerox ( 575545 ) *
    It's just about customer perception, they know sco dosent have a case so why not offer it, no loss for them and only positive benifits.

  • In a way (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dagrush ( 723402 )
    I'm glad it sounds like extortion. It'd be a sad day when you needed protection to use open source.

    • Re:In a way (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I guess it is a sad day then. Maybe you haven't been keeping up with this company called SCO. There are a few article about them on slashdot. I am sure you can find them somewhere.

  • RTFA bois (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17, 2003 @03:16PM (#7495604)
    Only 50-100 commercial customers are 'covered' by this. Anyone else who has simply downloaded JBoss and uses it (which is the vast majority of their 'user base') is still screwed if the reason for this actually comes to pass.

    IOW, if you want to be 'indemnified' then you have to buy JBoss, which is kinda dumb since it's supposed to be 'free'. Heh. Yay open source!

    • Re:RTFA bois (Score:5, Insightful)

      by enjo13 ( 444114 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @03:44PM (#7495837) Homepage
      How else do you expect this to work? JBoss is going to cover the costs of lawsuits for those that never contributed to JBoss the company in the first place?

      JBoss is 'free', and if you choose to use in the 'free beer' sense then you take on the risk of dealing with lawsuits. That's pefectly in keeping with the ideology of open source.. with freedom comes responsibility, and by taking advantage of something that is free you assume the risk of whatever comes out of that.

      If you choose to use JBoss the group, then they will guarantee you that it won't end up costing you lawsuit money if the lawyers come knocking. The code is free, the project is free, but the group that is using the project as a business is not. They charge money because this is how they make their living. Indemnification is just one more value-add that the JBoss commercial entity provides, and it's a good one in my opinion.

    • Why should you get something for nothing? Microsoft will now indemnify you in certain cases, but the maximum amount they will pay is the purchase price. So, no matter how much liability you are subject to, all you can get is a full refund.

    • Uh - duh? That's actually makes a great deal of sense to me. If you want someone to put their legal foot in it for you, then the logical thing to do is pay them to do so. It's like car insurance - you don't expect to get it for free.

      This is unfortunately likely to be a viable business model for some companies - simply have people pay them to "indemify" pieces of software they use. The lawyers have created this environment, and I'm afraid we're stuck with it for the forseeable future.
    • I just don't understand how this is a bad thing. One of top guys in my company just plain doesn't trust open source and never will. The SCO vs. IBM thing has given fuel to the fire of his arguments. Things like this help out out an open-source project and everyone using it. First of all there's the direct benefit to those who are indemnified. Then there are all the secondary benefits:
      • Everyone knows that a company is ready to stand up for this product, reducing it's "easy target" status.
      • Everyone knows th

  • Question (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TnkMkr ( 666446 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @03:18PM (#7495629)
    I have a questin about this whole indemnification thing. Why would I as someone who purchased or was even give a product from a comercial entity be worried about being sued if the comercial entity was using tech in violation of a patent?

    I mean as I understand it, it would be like all of the people who own a Xboxs are suddenly told that they have to pay Sony and additional $200 or be sued because MS used some propritary hardware in their counsle. Why wouldn't just MS be stuck holding the bag? Are not the customers protected by a good faith purchase agreement or something? Or would the task of sueing MS to get your $200 dollars back be left up to you (or some class action lawsuit)?

    I am sure I am oversimplifying the matter, but I'm hopping this be a starting point for an explination.

    Thanks
    • It's more like if everybody who bought Linux from RedHat were suddenly told that they have to pay SCO an additional $699 or be sued. Because we can see this trend already starting, it makes sense to try to get indemnity.
    • > Why would I as someone who purchased or was even give a product from a comercial
      > entity be worried about being sued if the comercial entity was using tech in
      > violation of a patent?

      To answer that, the question can actually be shortened to this:

      # Why would I as someone who purchased or was even give a product from a comercial
      # entity be worried about being sued

      Someone can sue anyone for anything. Winning is up to the lawyers and judge.
      Reasons for being sued dont play too much into things for
  • Could be a good thing, or it might just be a way to generate press and a positive spin. One area where this "protection" might be useful is in the use of AOP [and any other patented technologies/processes]. IIRC, JBoss 4.x uses and supports the use of AOP, yet AOP is patented (patent granted mid year). So if AOP is your thing and you use it and for some reason the patent holders decide to come collecting, I guess you can give them JBoss' address.

  • Great (Score:1, Funny)

    by spidergoat2 ( 715962 )
    Now all I need is legal protection if I violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Who's going to pony up for that!
  • This way, if the Apache Foundation doesn't do the same with Geronimo, they can sue the cr@p out of them or they customers. Or may be, they just want BEA to buy them out? OK, that's a troll.

  • Two Obvious goals here... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rkischuk ( 463111 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @04:31PM (#7496364)
    1) To frighten the ignorant into purchasing support so that they are now indemnified.

    2) To give news outlets another opportunity to mention the friction between JBoss and Geronimo. Though they outwardly state that it's been blown out of proportion, the very mention of it in the same press release has the insidious implication that if you choose Geronimo instead of JBoss, you won't be indemnified, and JBoss could come calling in the near future.
    • Sounds right. Here's what they're saying (from the article):

      The move to indemnify customers from potential patent infringements or copyright problems is intended to give customers more peace of mind when deciding whether to go with open-source software.

      Typically, commercial software companies provide legal protection to their customers, said Bob Bickel, JBoss Group's vice president of strategy and corporate development.

      And it's not a lie, of course. Most software, even proprietary software, comes w/o

  • Is unnecessary and stupid.

    The entire point of Open Source is to eliminate IP issues, not add to them! It's irrelevent as to whgat the dispute is, exactly, it's the fact that a dispute is even possible that is disturbing.

    This is one reason I like clear-cut licenses such as the BSD or GPL. Any such lawsuit is, in and of itself, a violation of the license, in those cases. That is the sensible way of doing things. Either a person has intellectual freedom, or they don't.

    There are also a few political consi

  • Confused... (Score:2, Redundant)

    by XaXXon ( 202882 )
    I'm really confused.

    JBoss has a J2EE implementation that they have licensed out under the LGPL. The Apache foundation has another, competing J2EE implementation, Geronimo, licensed under the Apache license (which is very similar to the BSD license?).

    JBoss is accusing Geronimo of taking their code and putting it into Geronimo. This would obviously be a violation because the Apache license isn't LGPL compatible.

    So it sounds like Geronimo should be indemnifying their users from legal action, not JBoss. W

    • So it sounds like Geronimo should be indemnifying their users from legal action, not JBoss. Why would a JBoss customer need legal protection?

      Possibly because JBoss may have shot itself in the foot.

      At least some of the JBoss code that Geronimo allegedly copied (see next paragraph) seems to have been derived from code under the Apache license. See the comments [www.qos.ch] by Ceki Gulcu, the author of log4j.

      One reason for Geronimo not offering protection is that Geronimo is an "incubator" project, so there proba

  • Just indemnify me from life.
    This is nuts. Are they from Utah by any chance?


  • So what risk exactly do you inherit for using open source code?

    Can it be copyright? Shouldn't only those people posting the code to the public be held accountable? Also, if someone is violating a copyright, are they not required to tell the violaters to stop before they can take legal action?

    If there is an issue with a patent I still don't understand how end users of the open source code can be held liable. Wouldn't that be similar to Amazon suing every B&N customer for using one click?

    Bott
  • The code in question (see the PDF attached to the Geronimo-mailing-list) involves extensions to another ASF project, Log4J, founded by Ceki Gulcu.

    Here are his findings about the code snippets in question. In short, he notes that the code is actually his IP (the second example from the PDF is actually a user-contributed piece to log4j that predates the jboss examples in jboss' own cvs repository), example code he wrote as part of the log4j distribution and donated directly to the ASF and hence part of AS

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