Third Brigade annexes open source intrusion detection tech

ITs Good News Week ..... Someone's dropped AI Turing Bombe somewhere, ....

OSSEC must be a Proxy Virtual Operating Systems BetaTester then. How very Considerate and Convenient for Course Plotting.

Open Source but not free(dom) ?

I wonder how long the free(dom) version will be maintained?

Third Brigade bought out IDRC a few years ago.

http://www.thirdbrigade.com/news_events.aspx?id=196

IDRC produced a fantastic Windows-based stateful packet inspection filter/firewall called CHX-I that could also modify and inject data into streams without being noticed by other detection systems.

http://www.sector.ca/presentations/Rares%20Stefan%20-%20TCP%20Perversion.ppt

It was rather like using GNU/Linux iptables (via a GUI) but could modify streams on the fly too, rather like netfilters with NFQUEUE, but was simple to configure via the GUI manager. It was far superior to ISA Server and had an impressively light footprint - about 1MB file-size and 20MB in-memory.

There were promises of an open-source version being made available.

There was a free(ware) version of CHX-I available and at the time of the acquisition assurances were given by the IDRC people joining Third Brigade that support for the free(ware) version would continue. The value-add was in the enterprise management tools and scripting.

The benefit at the time to IDRC was the excellent feedback and relationship they had with users and developers that led to continuous and rapid bug discoveries and fixes.

After six months or so it became impossible to even get an email reply to bug reports and finding the 'latest' versions relied on knowing an unpublished or linked URL.

After a year or so the free(ware) publication disappeared too.

CHX-I, which could have gone on to be a mass-market package because it had that 'wow' factor, was instead absorbed into the Third Brigade 'enterprise' offerings and lost its own identity.

Shame really.

Drug Dealers, Pimps, and Prostitutes

Developers, Marketing, and Graphic Designers.

Sort of a modern day parody to the summer of love. Notice, that generation is the one in power at the moment, and things have never been so totalitarian.

And note, the Austin Powers speech does not defend it :)

The kernel and basic tools will always be free, that has been true for longer than Linux or the GPL have been around. But, where is the urge to supply free to everyone else. It is not like the average user contributes back, the contribution back happens with the tech folk.

So, to make money with opensource, you opensource to begin with, monitor the copyright ensuring it comes into your domain, get some community backing, and some people saying the software is great, then fork your own creation.

Keep the opensource tool running behind the commercial release, and accept any modifications if you get copyright, until you emerge as one of the market leaders.

Then move to a completely commercial offering, where lots of people can install your tools, and you have a good track record.

Opensource is swings and roundabouts to developers, but at some point most software will go back to being commercial, and there will always be freeware, and on the whole it has improved quite a lot.

Now just hold on a darned cotton-pickin minute, y'all ...

"Sort of a modern day parody to the summer of love. Notice, that generation is the one in power at the moment, and things have never been so totalitarian.".... By Anonymous Coward Posted Sunday 22nd June 2008 01:19 GMT

Not in power yet, AC, just adding IT Controls? The Hash you have to Deal with belongs to an earlier Generation who missed out on the Flower Power Action.