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Virex 7.2 Hazardous to Fink's Health
Gorgonzola writes "It was reported that Virex 7.2 and Fink were conflicting, it turned out that Virex 7.2 was overwriting libraries in Fink's default directory, thus hosing Fink for those who had it installed, and preventing Fink from installing for future users. Also, one user pointed out that of Virux's included packages, several (CURL, OpenSSL, and DLCompat) had license terms that Virex was ignoring." It is strongly recommended you don't install Virex 7.2 until this issue is resolved.
Someone asked me the other day what was the best virus protection tool for MacOS X as they were planning an upgrade.
I scratched my head for a minute, did some checking on Symantic & McAfee's sites and realized that the Mac platform (OS X & 9 both included) hasn't seen a virus since 1997 -- the last of those autostart beasties (which still occasionally pop up on service bureau Zips).
The relative lack of critters, and just basic common sense keep virii off my Macs.
My Wintel boxes, however, have to live with the 20% system overhead bloat that is Norton Antivirus, coupled with Spybot S&D running at launch.
The only reason I ever ran Virex was to be a 'nice guy' to friends who use Windows and make sure that in forwarding some MS Office document from one Windows user to another I don't forward a virus as well. Virex has probably caught about 50 Windows viri over the years but never once anything that would actually execute on my Mac.
Fink is 'the' package management system on the Mac and the only one I use. I think my reaction is very typical: "Goodbye Virex."
I really doubt this is some anti OSS plot. Sounds to me like the PHB asked the programmer if the new version of Virex was ready, the programmer said something like "Yes, as soon as I move some libraries into the bundle and put some acknowledgements in the 'Read Me' file."
The PHB said "We'll do that stuff for the next release."