RE: Sourcefire Acquired by Check Point Software

[Frank Knobbe <frank () knobbe us>]

On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 19:55 -0400, Kyle Quest wrote:
> This is really good news for Checkpoint competitors
> [ because Checkpoint now will never be more than just "kinda pretty
> good" ]
> and potentially bad news for Snort users
> [ there's a good possibility that some of the rules will be
> closed ] :-)

Could we please stop the bullshit fear mongering and competitors
mud-slinging?

If anything, competitors should be afraid of the marriage of great
technology (Snort) with a established, solid, and ubiquitous company.
Snort will breeze some fresh wind into CP and raise the geek factor
within CP back to a pre-1996 level.

And the bullshit about Snort being closed is just that... bullshit. 

Even if CP would say one day that they don't support the open source IDS
engine anymore. you can bet that there will be a community driven fork
faster that you can forkbomb. But I don't think that's gonna happen.
Now, they may change pricing on the VRT rules, but that's not what they
bought SF for, right? You should be smart enough to know that it's not
about IDS rules.


What should be of more concern to the community is that the Nessus
source is being closed. Personally, I would have suggested to adjust
pricing a bit and add restrictions to counter reseller-leeching, but
keep the source open. Now that it is being closed, I wonder how long it
takes before the community once supporting Renauld will fork the current
code and carry on by themselves.

Open source software has the interesting property to survive attempts to
privatize code into proprietary environments, mainly be forking and
living on.


(Ron, I know you read DD. Please reconsider turning your back on the
community. Raise prices or do whatever, but leave the code open.)

Cheers,
Frank

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