With competitors Novell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc. all offering legal indemnity for users of their Linux products, Linux vendor Red Hat Inc. on Tuesday hopped on the bandwagon and unveiled a program to guarantee that its Linux code is free of intellectual property infringement issues. In an announcement on Tuesday, the Raleigh, N.C.-based vendor said its new Open Source Assurance program will protect all existing and future Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers from legal challenges while using the software. Bryan Sims, vice-president of business development at Red Hat, said that under the included Intellectual Property Warranty, the company would replace any software code that allegedly infringes on other code so users and developers can continue to work with the products. "It's clear that this is much better than indemnification because it provides the customer with a continuing right to actually use the software," Sims said.