The 6:th of October rocked open-source security software?

Wow. Yesterday, alot happended that deserves extensive comments. To extensive for me to bare, as I can't grasp weather any of it is good or bad..

First, Checkpoint bought SourceFire, the commercial arm of Snort.. for approximately $22500000 (roughly 1.7 Billion SEK). This will, for sure, have huge effects on open-source Snort, but checkpoint states that it will continue to evolve Snort as a open-source product. Good to hear, but there where are the guarantees? I guess I should trust Marin Roesch, inventor of Snort, founder and CTO of SourceFire, for doing this to Snort. In a letter to Snort.org website he states that he has full trust in how Checkpoint will care for Snort, and that the accustion will do good for everyones choice of IDS (at least the sane ones;).

I think this episode rocks the affair between Ebay and Skype (Skype is for me, just another product. It doesn't solve problems just creates new. That's how boring I am). In four years SourceFire has evolved from nothing, to a company worth $2.25M. Snort is a truly great product, and SourceFire has done an extremely good job organising and correlating the evolvement of Snort, in it frontend RNA and with appliance sensors based on Snort. Salut!

The other thing, (which although can't be compared to this affair) is that Nessus goes Closed Source, as of version 3. This is sad for us. According to what I've read, Nessus will continue to be free, but without being open source. Sad.

As I said, I have a hard time getting my feeling about this together. Thus, I have a hard time making speculations and comments on the deal (Snort). Hopefully, my mind will grasp this soon. Then, I'll post some more comments.

To sum this up, some words from Marty at the #Snort-channel at freenode,

06:07- < jofny> hmm. people who get their company sold almost always seem to buy horses
06:08- < roesch> no interest in horses
06:08- < roesch> I do like telescopes, though… :)
06:08- < jofny> but…you cant be a startupwhosoldhisbusiness without a horse!
06:08- < roesch> how about I just buy a ferarri, close enough?