Novell plans to offer the legal indemnification now that its $210m (£113m) acquisition of SuSE is complete, said Novell chief executive Jack Messman. The completion of the deal opens the way for a $50m investment from IBM in Novell, said Messman.
SCO's legal actions against Unix and Linux are rippling across the industry. But the Novell initiative highlights the response now under way. "It seems like there is a groundswell of support focused on pushing this issue aside," IDC analyst Al Gillen said.
Hewlett-Packard also offers indemnification. Red Hat has set up a legal defence fund to protect open-source programmers. And on Monday, Intel, IBM and MontaVista Software contributed to a $10m legal defence that the Open Source Development Labs consortium set up to protect Linux customers against SCO.
Under Novell's plan, the company will provide customers with protection from copyright infringement lawsuits to the tune of $1.5m, or a factor of 1.25 of their software purchase price. To get the protection, customers must buy SuSE Linux and support from Novell and sign a licensing agreement, Messman said.
The programme defangs SCO's threats for Linux customers, said Mark Radcliffe, an intellectual-property attorney with Gray Cary.
"It's going to make it more difficult for SCO to put pressure on licensees," Radcliffe said. "I assume that now Novell has done it, other people are going to have to do it, whether they like it or not."
Indemnifying a customer for 100 percent of their software purchase price is common, because lawsuit damages can be based on the plaintiff's lost profit, he added.
Novell's protection isn't the only programme, but it's the only one to come from a company that itself has owned Unix. SCO Group says Linux violates the Unix operating system's copyrights. Novell believes it still owns key Unix copyrights.
"We had unique rights regarding Unix that provide a very strong foundation for this indemnification programme," Messman said in an interview.
"We've got a license to use the Unix technology with our Novell customers," he said. "That license allows us to use any Unix code that might be in Linux -- we don't believe there is any -- but if there is, we are allowed to use it and we allow our customer to use it."
Now that the acquisition of SuSE is complete, SuSE becomes a product business unit within Novell, with its sales and marketing handled by Novell's existing geographic business units and SuSE's current sales and marketing staff. Novell says it will keep the SuSE Linux brand. "While SuSE Linux will retain its structure within Novell, its acquisition, like that of open-source company Ximian in August 2003, is aimed at promoting Linux adoption and integration broadly across Novell's product lines," said Novell in a statement. "SuSE Linux engineers will work closely with Novell's product teams to ensure they maximise their respective synergies in joint development efforts."
