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Sophos Acquires ActiveState

Posted by timothy on from the sophosticated-dealings dept.

Jacco de Leeuw writes "I was checking the website of anti-virus vendor Sophos when I noticed a press release: " Sophos Acquires Anti-Spam Specialist ActiveState for $23 million in cash". I didn't even know ActiveState was into anti-spam! What will this mean for their ActivePerl or ActivePython products?"

30 comments

  1. What will this mean... by Sevn · · Score: 1

    ...for their ActivePerl or ActivePython products?

    A diet containing significantly less processed dog and cat meat?

    --
    For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
    1. Re:What will this mean... by MonTemplar · · Score: 4, Informative
      Actually, from reading the article (yeah, I know... nobody on /. does that...) :
      ActiveState's product lines for open source programmers will continue to be developed and sold under the ActiveState brand. As a division of Sophos, the existing ActiveState team is committed to continuing its support of the open source language community.

      As to why Sophos have bought ActiveState, this press release would appear to indicate the reason - the PureMessage anti-spam system.

      MT.
      --
      -MT.
    2. Re:What will this mean... by harikiri · · Score: 2, Informative

      Don't forget ActiveTcl! ;-)

      --
      Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
    3. Re:What will this mean... by 0x0d0a · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As a division of Sophos, the existing ActiveState team is committed to continuing its support of the open source language community.

      You do realize that every press release during every purchase and merger over the years has *always* said that no changes will be made, no employees will be fired...

      --
      May we never see th
    4. Re:What will this mean... by dthable · · Score: 2, Funny

      Then they bring in the consultants.

    5. Re:What will this mean... by FrankBough · · Score: 1

      You've never met the founders of Sophos. They are clinically allergic to consultants.

    6. Re:What will this mean... by dthable · · Score: 1

      No, but I've seen Office Space within the last 4 days.

  2. Since we're no longer in the anti-spam business... by gnixdep · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It will mean that they'll have more freedom in thier choice of marketing methods.

  3. What will it mean for open source? ... RTFA? by thing12 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Maybe the story submitter should have read the article he submitted...

    ActiveState's product lines for open source programmers will continue to be developed and sold under the ActiveState brand. As a division of Sophos, the existing ActiveState team is committed to continuing its support of the open source language community.

  4. Windows language distributions by phch · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Python project provides convenient installers for Windows, so I've never relied on ActivePython. Besides, they're still a version behind anyway. But ActiveTcl and ActivePerl still seem to be the most convenient binary distributions on Win32. Hope they're still maintained.

    1. Re:Windows language distributions by burnitall · · Score: 2, Informative

      "Hope they're still maintained."

      yes they are! for linux and solaris as well =)

    2. Re:Windows language distributions by phch · · Score: 1

      Hmm, I guess I never considered using ActiveState language distributions on Linux and Solaris, since Perl/Python/Tcl are usually readily available on those platforms (via the platform distribution itself, or buildable from source).

      Since Win32 doesn't come with either a compiler or language installations, ActiveState is a convenient distribution point for getting binaries on Windows.

    3. Re:Windows language distributions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The cool thing about ActivePython is that it plugs into the Windows Script system.

      This means anything using the Windows Script Host can use Python, including general system automation as well as things like IE and certain IRC clients.

    4. Re:Windows language distributions by axxackall · · Score: 1
      What the reason to have ActiveState language distros for Linux when most (if not all) Linux distros has them already?

      Is it anything that ActiveState Tcl or Perl does better than a native port?

      I guess if they would not spend their resources on useless ports they would have more chance to stay on profit. Then we may not discuss this acquisition of ActiveState by a company which has nothing to do with the original busness of ActiveState.

      --

      Less is more !
  5. All is good ... by hobbs · · Score: 5, Informative

    As an ActiveState employee, I can say that this is all good, even for the tools and open source languages side of our business. While Sophos' anti-virus products merge well with ActiveState's successful PureMessage anti-spam software, Sophos is fully aware of the value ActiveState has received from the tools and languages side as well.

    All ActiveState employees will be sticking around, doing what they were doing before. We will continue to make the Active(Perl|Python|Tcl) language distributions and continue development on Komodo, TDK, PDK, etc.

    There is more in the open letter here:
    http://www.activestate.com/corporate/letter/

    1. Re:All is good ... by Rheingold · · Score: 1

      As a Sophos reseller, I'm happy to be able to add ActiveState's products to my line, especially since Perl and Python are languages in my business.

      --
      Wil
      wiki
  6. ActiveState perl is the shit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Anybody know if they're planning on porting Active State perl to linux? Work that I used to do in linux with awk, sed, and shell scripting is now done in windows 98 with ActiveState Perl. A lot of the perl features and syntax reminds me of unix shell scripting, so it probably wouldn't be too hard to port it to linux.

    1. Re:ActiveState perl is the shit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Damn, that's amusing!

    2. Re:ActiveState perl is the shit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It already is available for Linux.
      http://www.activestate.com/Products/ASPN_P erl/comp atibility.plex

  7. Anti-Virus for Linux/Unix by hbo · · Score: 3, Interesting


    Sophos's anti-virus technology will be integrated with PureMessage, ActiveState's enterprise email protection software, to deliver industry-leading anti-virus and anti-spam protection in a single, consolidated solution - Sophos PureMessage. PureMessage currently supports AIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris. For more information please see http://www.sophos.com/products/pm/


    So the real news here is that the hole created by Microsoft's purchase of RAV is about to be filled. Since ActiveState's relationship with Microsoft is important for their tools this could impact that relationship.

    --

    "Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers

  8. What Does it All Mean?? by kurosawdust · · Score: 3, Funny
    Sophos Acquires Anti-Spam Specialist ActiveState for $23 million in cash". I didn't even know ActiveState was into anti-spam! What will this mean for their ActivePerl or ActivePython products?"

    It means they will be able to consolidate their debt and significantly lower their monthly payments, of course...

    1. Re:What Does it All Mean?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot that they'll be able to make their penises and breasts bigger as well...

  9. Re:What will it mean for open source? ... RTFA? by Artifex · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Maybe the story submitter should have read the article he submitted...


    Well, normally editors would catch something like that. But this is Slashdot :)

    --
    Get off my launchpad!
  10. How about that Sophos antivirus by scrytch · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... When is Sophos going to stop sending out bounce notices to the forged "senders" of email viruses? These do nothing but spamvertise the product. I must have blocked millions of sophos bounces of Sobig. Not that Sophos is the only offender, but it seems designed to do so...

    Fact is, more than 99% of virus traffic is "stealthy" sends of trojans now, not some macro virus attached to a .doc file. And in every case it's forged. Bounces have to stop.

    --
    I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
    1. Re:How about that Sophos antivirus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sophos MailMonitor is configured by default not to send bounces to senders of virus infected emails for precisely this reason. If you are getting such bounces it is because the administrator at the receiving site has enabled the feature. It's the kind of thing people ask for if it's not there, so it has to be included.

  11. From the horses mouth .. by RubberDuckie · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just received a call from someone at ActiveState (we use their Spam filter). She told me that they would continue to support all the ActiveState products, including the open source languages. She also said there would be no staff reductions. Let's hope the transition is painless (for the employees and the rest of us).

  12. And look at what happend to slashdot!!! by shrugwhaa · · Score: 1

    I mean... they said they wouldn't change anything
    or fire anyone... but do they REALLY
    expect us to believe some of these articles
    are still done by Cowboy Neal???

    I mean.. it's OBVIOUS that he's been replaced
    by 3 parakeets and a Rubber band... Isn't it???

  13. what will this mean? by ztwilight · · Score: 1

    Hmmm, perhaps less spam? Who isn't anti-spam? (except, of course, for spammers).

    --
    Who moved my sig?