Red Hat does freebie Linux legal protection

Faced with new competitive challenges from Microsoft, Novell and Oracle, Linux seller Red Hat has begun promising protection against intellectual-property lawsuits.

The leading Linux seller quietly slipped the indemnification provision into a question-and-answer page on their website after Microsoft and Novell announced a technical and patent partnership last week.

Mark Webbink, Red Hat's deputy general counsel, said: "As with any indemnification provision, if [a customer] were to get sued for intellectual-property infringement over code they got from us, the provision of the indemnification language kicks in. At that point, we step into their shoes [to handle the legal attack]."

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The indemnification is a new element to Red Hat's Open Source Assurance programme, which guarantees customers that the company will rewrite code found to violate another's intellectual property. Webbink said he believes that earlier pledge is more significant than the indemnification.

He said: "We still think the earlier version of the Open Source Assurance was the far more critical thing, and we'll continue to stand behind that."

But the company decided adding indemnification was worthwhile. Webbink said: "Our management and board looked at it and said, 'look, this isn't worth a hill of beans but if saying it will make people feel better, we'll say it'. We've added it to the programme."

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com