Snort mailing list archives
RFC: Forking Snort
From: Jed Pickel <jed () pickel net>
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 02:50:20 -0400
This document is intended to gauge the interest of the Snort community in creating a fork of Snort that is governed by a consortium (similar to Apache's "Apache Software Foundation") rather than a single profit driven corporate entity. Below I will provide some background as to why I am bringing this up. There are advantages and disadvantages to this from nearly every perspective; thus, I encourage comments and discussion of all opinions. Snort has come to a critical point in its evolution. Due to the hard work from numerous developers and thousands of users, Snort is now monitoring many of the worlds most sensitive networks. Also, a growing number of companies are offering commercial solutions based on Snort and standardization efforts have leveraged Snort as a conduit toward furthering security standards. As a result, the number of Snort users continues to grow as it becomes more commercially accepted. Few would disagree that Snort has successfully become a "killer app". The challenge Snort now faces is how to avoid becoming a victim of its own success. Apache is an example of open source code that has successfully bridged the gap from killer app to significant piece of Internet Infrastructure. This success can be attributed to governing and regulating Apaches growth through a consortium. I believe Snort could benefit from the same type of arrangement. Unfortunately, the forces that have brought Snort this level of success are falling out of balance. With Marty at the helm of both a wildly successfully open source project and Sourcefire (a growing, soon to be 800 pound gorilla in the intrusion detection market) he is faced with answering to a board of directors on one hand and the security community on the other. These are opposing forces with dramatically different goals. It is simply not possible for a single person to serve both of these roles and act in the best interest of each. While the number of users of Snort is growing, the percentage of community contributed code is decreasing. The reasons for this are not immediately obvious. Although there is plenty of community interest in contributing code, these interests are aparently in conflict with the goals of Sourcefire. Thus, some contributions have had been subjected to stealth deletions, others have never been incorporated in the codebase or have been re-written by Sourcefire to be more accommodating toward their goals. The most successful of the contributed code has been subjected to consistent negative and inflammatory PR campaigns. Marty carries this out this by proclaiming to the community false and misleading statements such as --- "Many of the contributed plugins, Marty says, 'were bug-filled, crashy, and slowed things down.'"[1] This tactic began to manifest in an unhealthy way a little over a year ago, shortly after Sourcefire was getting started. One can only speculate the strategy of Sourcefire in the long run; however, it would be foolish to think the goals of Sourcefire do not include maximizing profits. I have plenty of respect for Marty and I believe he has the best of intentions; however, he is no longer the man with the final say at Sourcefire. The investors of Sourcefire now control the critical strategies and goals of the company. There will undoubtedly and understandably be pressure from Sourcefire investors to gain more control of Snort while creating barriers to entry and stifling the competition. There are a vast number of Snort add ons and wrappers (both open source and proprietary) that lead me to believe Snort is on the track toward becoming something of an operating system of intrusion detection that forms a base for numerous applications and business to grow and flourish. I would like to see an environment of healthy competition in this market to benefit the consumer, security community, and provide the opportunity for independent developers and business to find some niche and profit from their work. These are the reasons why I believe now is the time for the community to begin discussing forming a branch of Snort that is governed by a consortium that is not profit driven, but rather exists to support the best interests of the community and support healthy competition among all of the companies that are providing Snort based security solutions. This is a sensitive topic, but I believe the time has come to surface it. I'd like to hear your opinion... Is now the right time to begin considering a fork or branch or Snort? What benefits or advantages would this create for end users, business that use Snort, business that provide products or services based on Snort, or the security community as a whole? If a consortium were formed for governing a new fork of Snort who or what businesses, organizations, or individuals should that involve? All comments, flames, and opinions are welcome. The sole intention of this message is to initiate discussion. Regards, * Jed References ----------------------------------------- [1] http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/06/29/2127239.shtml?tid=3 ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf _______________________________________________ Snort-users mailing list Snort-users () lists sourceforge net Go to this URL to change user options or unsubscribe: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/snort-users Snort-users list archive: http://www.geocrawler.com/redir-sf.php3?list=snort-users
Current thread:
- RFC: Forking Snort Jed Pickel (Jul 02)
- Re: [Snort-devel] RFC: Forking Snort Ryan Russell (Jul 02)
- Re: [Snort-devel] RFC: Forking Snort james (Jul 02)
- Re: RFC: Forking Snort Erek Adams (Jul 02)
- Re: RFC: Forking Snort Martin Roesch (Jul 02)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: RFC: Forking Snort Andrew R. Baker (Jul 02)
- sorta new at doing this with snort Don (Jul 04)
- Re: sorta new at doing this with snort Imran William Smith (Jul 04)
- sorta new at doing this with snort Don (Jul 04)
- Re: RFC: Forking Snort Jed Pickel (Jul 04)
- Re: RFC: Forking Snort Kyle R. Hofmann (Jul 04)
- Re: [Snort-devel] Re: RFC: Forking Snort Martin Roesch (Jul 04)
(Thread continues...)
- Re: [Snort-devel] RFC: Forking Snort Ryan Russell (Jul 02)