Once More unto the Breach

OSRM, Lloyds of London, and Open Source Insurance

This news from last week was fascinating.  Lloyd's of London is looking to offer insurance against potential IP litigation involving Linux and open source, and OSRM will be their sole U.S. agent. 

I have to wonder at this.  How did the actuaries at Lloyd's members actually figure out the risks here?  What dataset did they use?  Do pharmaceutical companies sue hospitals over patent infringements rather than each other?  Did they base their calculations on the lonely two suits brought about by SCO Group against Daimler-Chrysler and Autozone? 

And if the patent risks in the Linux base claimed by OSRM's Daniel Egger are real, why aren't those patent holders performing their fiduciary responsibilities and at the very least suing the Linux distribution companies like Red Hat and Novell, regardless of whether the patent holders are traditional vendors or merely these dreaded patent holding companies we keep hearing about?  Or why aren't they chasing the well known large customers?  You think it would already be a veritable gold mine in a multi-billion dollar marketplace, and if they don't act soon, surely they risk losing control of those same patents.  This assumes of course that these software patents are strong defensible patents. 

Wikipedia has a fascinating history of insurance.  The bit on patents for insurance is also fascinating as well as the controversy over whether its good to issue such business method patents in the U.S. for new insurance types.  (I wonder if OSRM applied for this patent compounding their ignominious behaviour.)

Insurance as a business would appear to need to have three factors:

• a dire consequence  (pirates, fire, earthquake, lawyers)
   
• a probability greater than zero but less than 1.0 that the consequence will occur
   
• a banker willing to collect dues from all to cover the costs of the few (investing the proceeds in the mean time of course)

We haven't seen the data on the dire consequences so how can they calculate the risk?

Of course there's lots of data available on vendors suing customers over user and CPU counting issues for proprietary software.  Some vendors even unleash the dreaded BSA on customers for costly audits.  Here's a situation where free and open source software shines, because there is no license counting.  Maybe the Microsoft executive had it backwards all those years ago when he claimed open source was a cancer.  You see, if you have cancer, insurance companies won't sell you life insurance.  Maybe the risk of proprietary software litigation and audits over user counting is so high you can't buy insurance against that eventuality.

Either way, until real risk demonstrates itself in the market place, I can't imagine buying open source insurance from OSRM.   At the very least, there have got to be better business risk mitigation strategies in which I can invest money. And on the positive side, there have got to be better business opportunities around open source on which I can spend money. 

Mono, Microsoft, and Mischief

Update (17-Sep-2005, 19:00 PDT): Well the party did indeed happen, t-shirts and all!  I'm sorry I wasn't in L.A. for it.  Todd Bishop from the Seattle Post Intelligencer was covering the PDC and talked with Miguel.  He talks about mono in an article and on his blog.  Hopefully Miguel posts pictures soon.

Apparently Microsoft is again denying Miguel de Icaza a Mono BoF at this year's PDC. This is such a missed opportunity for Microsoft.  Microsoft needs Mono.  They published the CLR and C# language specifications as international standards through ECMA and ISO, but it still looks like a proprietary controlled technology to the customer base.  Standards are a message in the marketplace that encourage multiple implementations.  As long as there is only one commercial implementation, there is no standard, and the customers know it regardless of the number of trees killed to produce specifications.  Encourage Mono and then deliver the better integrated experience for writing web services on .NET.  Of course that would require the ability to ship software in a timely fashion. 

Microsoft is the company that re-branded the ".NET Server" to "Windows Server 2003", and ".NET" to "Windows .NET" to ensure they really drove home the idea that it's all about Windows.  At this point in their existence, they already own that word in customers' minds, and unfortunately customers know that really means their "desktop".  There was the opportunity to own a new word — ".NET" — and even associate it with the idea of servers, but that's gone now.  It's "Windows .NET".  IBM learned a long time ago to own new words.  They have a history of owning new words and moving along with their customers.  There was "mainframe" and "PC" and even "Selectric" at one glorious time.  Digital Equipment Corporation on the other hand ended up only owning one word.  Too bad. 

If I was Novell, I would start a nasty viral ad campaign for the PDC.  Instead of gathering in a hallway like stubborn refugees, get a meeting room in a neighbouring hotel, or take over a bar like a Dick's Last Resort.  Pass out invitation cards and put out notices in the lobbies of all the local hotels for the PDC, and on the message boards at the conference.  Set-up the screen and one of those nifty portable projectors, plug in the laptop, and let Miguel do what Miguel does so well.  Buy the beer and the food.  Hand everyone a copy of the latest SuSE distribution, and whatever Mono tools can be put together.  Hand out t-shirts to the first 100 people through the door and make them GREAT t-shirts.  (I'm thinking a brick wall background with the Mono monkey logo "spray painted" on the wall in a loud fluorescent blue or green.  No words.  No other logos.  We already know what the Novell logo looks like and it would spoil the effect.)  Encourage everyone to wear them to the PDC the next day.  Remind Microsoft that you're customers — and that it's your money.  Make the Mono BoF the best little party of the PDC.  It certainly couldn't cost as much as a booth in the vendor hall. 

Of course that's just what I'd do.