RE: Sourcefire Acquired by Check Point Software

[Frank Knobbe <frank () knobbe us>]

On Sat, 2005-10-08 at 19:24 -0400, Kyle Quest wrote:
> Totally agree. That's kinda what I was talking about in one of the
> previous
> emails. The Nessus statement can be paraphrased into this:
> We don't get any benefit from open source (aka nobody contributes),
> but we feel the pains of open sources (aka other companies using
> code).
> I totally understand them. It's just silly to blame GPL for it...


Except that the part you don't understand is that open source is not all
about community contribution.

Open source means I can review it. I can even correct if I see problems.

Take Snort, it's open source. Take some proprietary IDS whizbang-doodad.
Compare the two. You don't know what the whizbang does under the hood,
but you do know what Snort does under the hood.

That's why I think taking Nessus 3 and closing the source is not a good
idea: "Hey guys, buy Nessus 3 instead of 2, it has a special algorithm
to speed up scans, and no, sorry, we can't show it to you, you have to
believe is that it is better"

If they kept Nessus 3 open source (not for community input, but for
inspection), and only changed the license from GPL to a proprietary,
restrictive license, they could have accomplished their goal of
squashing the reseller-leeches while still keeping the source available.

Open Source != Free Source

-Frank

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