[ Thanks to Matt for
this link. ]
“IBM is giving its customers the blues by asking them to assume
financial and legal risk with its open-source software–that’s
after those same customers have already shelled out hundreds of
thousands of dollars for the code.“So far, Big Blue has refused to assume liability for its
customers on intellectual property infringements for any of the
company’s applications or systems that are developed on open-source
platforms. That’s unfair to customers.“Indemnification against copyright infringement litigation has
long been a part of information technology services and software
contracts, until the advent of open-source platforms. Now, some
companies, most notably IBM, have refused to assume liability for
any application suite–such as WebSphere–that has been developed
on an open-source platform or any application suite that uses
open-source components…”
Related Story:
TechNewsWorld:
Indemnification and Linux Insanity(Oct 01, 2003)