Red Hat joins SCO indemnity brigade

In response to the SCO Group's legal action against Linux, Red Hat is offering new legal protection that guarantees the company will replace any code found to infringe copyrights.

The warranty, which is part of a new project called the Open Source Assurance Program, is for all existing and future customers of the company's Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system products, the company said in an announcement on Monday night, before the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo that begins on Wednesday in New York.

SCO alleges that IBM improperly moved Unix intellectual property into Linux and, independently, that Linux infringes the company's Unix copyrights. But offers of legal defence are sprouting all over the Linux landscape as advocates try to defuse threats from SCO, which has sued IBM for breach of contract and has promised to sue a Linux user for copyright infringement.

Novell, the number two Linux seller after Red Hat, by virtue of its acquisition of SuSE Linux, began indemnifying its Linux customers last week, following in the footsteps of Hewlett-Packard.

Stephen Shankland writes for News.com