[ale] Sourcefire acquires ClamAV

[Bob Toxen]

Jim,

It is by intention that I mention Snort. Sourcefire deliberately
ages new signatures by a week unless you pay LOTS of money to them
to get them immediately.

I then had a dialog with Sourcefire's high muckety muck about license
fees for my small company to use for a client's single office of about
50 people.  They wanted as much money as for General Motors to license one
their many-thousand-people sites.  If I wanted it for two small clients,
I'd have to pay the same huge fee for each.  Despite my trying to get
them to be reasonable, they would not.

I use ClamAV for a buncha clients.  I don't mind reasonable license
fees.  However, if Sourcefire is going to take the work of volunteers
and then charge ME lots of money to get that work, that goes against
the Open Source principal.

Bob Toxen
bob at verysecurelinux.com               [Please use for email to me]
http://www.verysecurelinux.com        [Network&Linux/Unix security consulting]
http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com [My book:"Real World Linux Security 2/e"]
Quality Linux & UNIX security and SysAdmin & software consulting since 1990.
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   -- Bob Toxen 10/03/2002

On Mon, Aug 20, 2007 at 03:45:01PM -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-08-20 at 14:23 -0400, Bob Toxen wrote:
> > There goes another good Open Source product.  Either that or someone
> > else -- like Snort -- will take up the torch and provide FREE and TIMELY
> > updates.

> Bob, is it by irony or intention that you mention Snort?  Sourcefire is
> the commercial arm of Snort, and I can see Sourcefire being the same
> commercial arm to ClamAV.  Snort didn't fall off the face of the earth
> when Sourcefire appeared (years ago now), in fact one could argue that
> Sourcefire enabled Snort to mature and become more robust.

> -Jim P.