Open Source

Worldwide, more than thirty legal claims involving infringement of Open Source licenses have been brought against corporations in the last two years. In every known case, plaintiffs have prevailed in enforcing their rights to restrict the use of their code.

Open Source Compliance Representation and Warranty Insurance is designed specifically to deal with the unique, but substantial business risks, involved in merger and acquisitions or other corporate transactions. It should be of interest to any company that uses or relies upon Linux or other Open Source software, a marketplace that is projected by IDC to reach $35 billion by 2008.

Any enterprise that builds software systems, whether for commercial distribution or for its own internal use, may find itself in violation of the terms and conditions under which Linux and other Open Source software is made available. Given the extremely widespread use of Linux and other Open Source technologies in the modern enterprise (Linux use estimated to be 4.1 million servers and 12 million devices in 2006), such violations may well be present even where companies have made no official decision to incorporate Open Source into their products or infrastructure.

For example, a company that depends upon Open Source components for its own proprietary software to run smoothly may find that the licenses under which the use of Open Source is granted require the company to make its own proprietary software publicly available under comparable licenses, thereby making open source software “viral” in nature.

There are currently over ninety established OS licenses, the General Public License (GPL) being the primary license under which Linux, and other utilities are made available.

The policy provides cover up to $10 million to cover:

• loss of profits associated with the withdrawal or alteration of a product incorporating non-compliant code
  
• the impaired valuation of an acquisition agreement exchanging open source software
  
• in certain circumstances costs to mitigate such losses including the expense of repair or replacement of code

Click below for:

Open Source brochure
Open Source application form