Startup to Offer Open Source Insurance 268
ThePretender writes "From the Infoworld article, 'Open Source Risk Management LLC (OSRM), a startup company that last month hired Pamela Jones, editor of the popular Groklaw.net Web site, as director of litigation risk research, plans to soon begin offering insurance policies to companies using open source software but fear that they may be sued, according to a company spokeswoman'. What's next - Developers having to pick up 'code malpractice' insurance? Egads." Might as well get some alien abduction insurance while you're at it.
Malpractice Insurance (Score:5, Informative)
They already have it. The agency I work for has several carriers that will write a malpractice (officially called "Professional Liability") policy for computer nerds. The standard one that I've seen provides a million dollars of coverage in the event that you screw up and cause something like data loss or the like. The policy itself is pretty broadly worded and could cover everything from bugs in a program you wrote to a general mistake of stupidity dealing with media. As I recall they start at about $1,200+ a year depending on the type of business and the people involved.
All insurance really does is protect you from losses that you couldn't (or don't want to) afford. The comment from the summary sounds sarcastic (as well as the "throw-your-money-away dept." tagline) but in reality in this sue happy world these types of policies are not a bad idea. Do you want to lose your business and livelihood over an honest mistake and some sue happy customer? A few hundred or thousand bucks for peace of mind is a small price to pay in this day and age.
code-malpractice (Score:2, Informative)
What's next - Developers having to pick up 'code malpractice' insurance?
I am in consulting and guess what, insurance to protect me in case of a damage causing programming error starts at over $2,000 a year! And for good reason, imagine you write something that rounds up instead of down in the hundredths place for some output from a data generatng monte carlo. It could go unnoticed for months, and then tens of millions of records in a database could need to be checked and recalculated. That would be HUGE $$$.
Not former. Current. (Score:2, Informative)
and fp, I think?
"former editor"? (Score:2, Informative)
'code malpractice' insurance (Score:3, Informative)
It's called Errors and Omissions insurance.
Former Editor? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"former editor"? (Score:5, Informative)
as of Tue Mar 16 12:41:33 MST 2004 she hasn't made any announcement to the contrary...
She's not a former editor! (Score:5, Informative)
Check your facts.
Re:Malpractice Insurance (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Malpractice Insurance (Score:5, Informative)
And in theory you can prevent people from suing you if you put up a "Beware of Dog" sign or a "Private Property" sign. In reality you'll always find some clever lawyer or easily-swayed jury that rules the other way.
Are you going to trust the future of your business and life to a disclaimer?
Programmers' malpractice? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:code-malpractice (Score:2, Informative)
You also know that simulations are not real life, and there WILL be differences.
Checking tens of millions of records is not much more expensive than checking 1 record. The expense is writing and verifying the query.
If you're using monte carlo, you already know that there is no such thing as true randomness in deterministic systems, and computers are deterministic systems. Any output is going to be skewed somewhere, probably well before the 100th decimal place.
Re:She's not a former editor yet! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Malpractice Insurance (Score:1, Informative)
Better links (less misinformation) (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.osriskmanagement.com/about.shtml [osriskmanagement.com] is pretty clear that Pamela Jones is staying with groklaw.
http://linuxpr.com/releases/6631.html [linuxpr.com] is as well.
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/mai n/open_source_insurance.html [zdnet.com] doesn't mention PJ but is informative.
P.S. Apparently the SCO fee of $699 would buy $23,300 of OSRM coverage...which will include defending from attacks by SCO.Re:Malpractice Insurance (Score:2, Informative)
Are you going to trust the future of your business and life to a disclaimer?
Not to mention, laws vary depending on location about disclaimers.
OSI (Score:3, Informative)
How about the following model for open source insurance.
Get a group of a couple hundred people together - all within a couple of degrees of eachother. Blue book eachothers cars - then all pay into an investment fund a set rate each month for auto or other insurance. Not into an insurance policy with some other carrier - but an actual investment/savings fund.
Take an umbrella policy out on the whole investment for an extreme case, and pay for that policy out of the combined account. If there is an accident that requires payment over a certain percentage of the value of the fund - then you leverage the policy from some insurance carrier that you have purchased. But, if at the end of the year there are no accidents - the investment OSI can pay a dividend on the money paid in and invested.
All other insurance companies operate this way - but here is a community based insurance. The big guys are just investment companies that take otehr peoples money to invest with in leiu of paying them off if something should happen to them or the property that they are esentially using as an asset backing to the investment. In the sense that the maintaining of the well-being of the object is the incentive for the person to pay to insure its well-being. and in the case of auto insurance - this investment revenue is guarenteed by law.
You must have insurance on your vehicle regardless of whether you have been in an accident. and if, at the end of the year - you dont get into an accident - you do not get any return on your contribution to the insurance companies investment.
Inaccuracies @ Infoworld (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah right. From today's GL:
I've been getting inundated with email, asking if Groklaw will be shutting down, thanks to an article in InfoWorld that identified me as the "former editor of Groklaw". That is inaccurate. I am still the editor of Groklaw, and my work with OSRM is separate from it. My contract is written so as to ensure my having time to do Groklaw. I have always done paid work in addition to Groklaw, so this isn't anything new.
The article said that SCO didn't sound displeased to hear the news. Not that I wish to throw cold water on anyone's pleasure in Lindon or anything, but Groklaw isn't going anywhere.