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RE: [Dailydave] Sourcefire Acquired by Check Point Software

From: Kyle Quest (Kyle.Questnetworkengines.com)
Date: Sat Oct 08 2005 - 12:49:19 CDT

>> It's amazing how Nessus and SourceFire [to a certain degree] (I'm
>> talking
>> about the Snort rules here) are complaining
>> about how unfair it is that somebody just takes their work and does
>> whatever they want with it... including repackaging and selling it.
>> Well, this is what GPL is all about!
>
>uhm... no. These guys have other complaints. It's not the fact that
>people are using GPL'ed code to make money. Feel free to ask these guys
>directly if you really want to know why they did things the way they
>did.

Here's exactly what Renaud Deraison said in his email on the nessus list
when Douglas Nordwall asked him why Nessus 3 is not going to be GPLed:

"Virtually nobody has ever contributed anything to improve the scanning
 _engine_ over the last 6 years. I'm not talking about shoe- horning
 DB support in nessusd, but really to contribute things which make
 the scans faster, or Nessus more powerful.

 Michel Arboi, a friend of mine, is one exception to that,
 and Nicolas Pouvesle, a colleague at Tenable, is another exception to that.

 A number of companies are _using_ the source code against us, by
 selling or renting appliances, thus exploiting a loophole in the GPL.
 So in that regard, we have been fueling our own competition and we want
 to put an end to that. Nessus3 contains an improved engine, and we don't
 want our competition to claim to have improved "their" scanner."

Let's analyze what he's saying...

The first paragraph can't even be considered a reason to close source code
because it has no effect on the product itself. So what if not a lot of
external contributions are submitted. It doesn't do any harm and it's not
the real reason for dropping GPL.

The real reason for dropping GPL comes in the last paragraph where
Renaud says, "A number of companies are _using_ the source code against us,
by selling or renting appliances, thus exploiting a loophole in the GPL.".
Now how can you say, "uhm... no" to that?

Kyle