Linux start-up offers SCO-case insurance

US start-up Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) plans on Monday to begin selling Linux users protection against copyright infringement claims such as those levied by the SCO Group.

The New York-based company is launching the insurance-like offering after a six-month study that compared Linux with several versions of Unix. The evaluation uncovered no copyright problems with versions 2.4 or 2.6 of Linux's heart, or kernel, a finding that contradicts SCO's legal attack on IBM, AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler.

John St. Clair, OSRM's executive director, said: "We have come out of the examination process with the strong belief that there are no meritorious copyright infringement claims in the kernel," said. "With all we have seen to date, I don't believe they have a strong case."

SCO disagreed. A spokesman for SCO said: "Everything we have looked at and found would run contrary to what they're finding."

But SCO has no objection to OSRM's business. "If people feel there's risk involved in running open source, I supposed the business they've created is a good one," added the spokesman.

OSRM's legal protection is the adaptation of the business world to the arrival of open-source software, a collaborative programming philosophy in which developers cooperate by freely sharing their programs' source code rather than keeping it under tight proprietary wraps. The new offering follows indemnification Novell and Hewlett-Packard provide customers who buy Linux products and a promise by Red Hat to replace any Linux software that a court case finds to infringe copyrights.

However, RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady hasn't encountered widespread interest in such protections thus far. "I'd be surprised if the traction was huge," he said of OSRM's insurance offering. "We don't see a lot of folks concerned with the ongoing litigation."