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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Breaking News -
General:
Novell Launches Linux
Indemnification Program
Business software maker Novell Inc said that it would indemnify customers
using its SuSE Linux software, the latest in a string of steps by the
operating system's promoters to assure users that Linux won't become a legal
headache.
Provo, Utah-based Novell, which also will close its $210 million
acquisition
of SuSE Linux, is making a strong push into the market for providing software
update and support services for Linux, the operating system that can be copied
and modified freely.
"We are taking our support to a whole new level," Novell Chief Executive
Jack
Messman told Reuters. "We think this a key step so that we can support the
adoption of Linux in the enterprise."
Linux has proven to be popular among businesses, since they can turn
relatively inexpensive personal computers running Intel Corp's chips into
powerful servers that dish up Web pages, handle financial transactions and
store data.
The Linux community, however, has been at odds for nearly a year with The
SCO
Group Inc, another Utah company that is suing IBM Corp for illegally embedding
parts of SCO's Unix software code in versions of the freely available Linux
operating system.
SCO also warned companies that they must pay to use Linux, which is based
on
the proprietary Unix operating system, or face litigation.
Messman said that the indemnification program was "not meant to address any
one company or threat," but the initiative is similar to Hewlett-Packard Co's
offer, made in September, to indemnify its customers who use the Linux
operating system against potential legal troubles.
Additionally, Open Source Development Labs, or OSDL, a non-profit industry
consortium that is working to promote further adoption of Linux, launched a
legal defense fund for Linux users against copyright infringement
lawsuits.
That fund, which has collected $3 million of its $10 million goal, was
backed
by initial pledges from IBM, Intel and Linux device software developer
MontaVista Software Inc.
Novell, which at one point owned the rights to Unix before it came to be
owned
by SCO, is offering indemnification protection for its registered customers
for the latest version of SuSE Linux and who, after Monday, sign up for an
upgrade license agreement and support contract.
SuSE, based in Nuremberg, Germany, and with annual revenue around $40
million,
is Europe's leading distributor of Linux, a family of software that gives
software programers open access to its underlying code. The closely held
company ranks second among independent distributors of Linux behind Red Hat
Inc, of Raleigh, N.C.
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