Slashdot Mirror


McAfee, Macromedia Flirting With F/OSS Community

xbsd writes "Those computer industry specialists claiming that the end of Linux is fast approaching may be interested in two recent movements inside the industry. Two weeks ago, McAfee, one of the world leaders in computer security products, launched its first commercial antivirus solution for Linux, and just yesterday, Macromedia announced that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation and plans to deliver a next-generation rich Internet application (RIA) development tool code-named Zorn based on the popular open-source IDE."

12 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Anti-Virus by bersl2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's also ClamAV, which is a GPLed virus scanner (mainly for mailservers, but it does have a daemonized scanner and a CLI-based frontend).

  2. Re:Eclipse Faster by QuantumG · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I love the fact that people went to all the trouble of getting Eclipse to compile with gcj and then didn't supply any binaries for use by the general public.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. Turnabout by overshoot · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Well, fair's fair.

    Microsoft bought a Rumanian company that produced border protection (protect MS clients by filtering on Linux hosts) and turned around to "cut off [McAfee's] air supply" with an MS client antivirus offering. Of course they shut down the Linux border filters.

    In return, McAfee fills the vacuum by offering a Linux-hosted border filter.

    Works for me.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  4. we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting


    we had a virus that corrupted MSIE (mshtml.dll) Mcafee was instantly disabled, that 100mb install became useless all because Mcafee based their application dialogs on the MSIE component

    we cancelled our contract with them soon after as we realised that if Mcafee dont understand security (they understand marketing though) so we will have to find someone who does understand security, and knows not to base the last line of defence on the biggest exploitable product on a windows system

    ClamAV is looking good because of the costing though reliabilty and accurate is still a concern

    -SJ

    1. Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      ClamAV is looking good because of the costing though reliabilty and accurate is still a concern

      THe last time I saw a virus get past ClamAV, I noticed a bout a 6 hour lag between the commerical providers recognizing it and clamav. 6 hours is pretty good for a free product.

  5. McAfee by lheal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    McAfee started out as a shareware company, selling an antivirus program for MS-DOS and Macintosh.

    They acquired a bunch of smaller companies, then started calling themselves "Network Associates" soon after they acquired that company.

    While they haven't ever been open source, they've usually (always?) had a product you could download and use without first paying them for it. And I think they have always given out free updates.

    I wonder how much of their corporate culture has survived from the old days? To what degree is "McAfee" just a brand name?

    --
    Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
  6. Re:Anti-Virus by stevey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't think they've even cared to try.

    But it's no great loss, there is a kernel module available to allow on-access scanning for arbitary purposes : Dazuko.

    I used that to hookup real-time virus scanning with a couple of different engines - there's a userspace deamon which you can use to block, or allow, any file operations with.

  7. So is this the DreamWeaver Answer? by syntap · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Macromedia announced that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation and plans to deliver a next-generation rich Internet application (RIA) development tool code-named Zorn based on the popular open-source IDE.

    Perhaps this is Macromedia's way of bringing something like the equivilent of what MacroMedia UltraDev set out to accomplish (basically Dreamweaver used as a dev tool). Is it possible Macromedia's involvement will be basically to skin Eclipse to make it more familiar to current Dreamweaver users?

  8. Re:Anti-Virus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The other interesting thing about Clam is that Sensory Networks (sensorynetworks.com) has an accelerator card for it...........

  9. Dear Macromedia: by Heretik · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Make it truly open, or piss off.

    We've had plenty enough of your proprietization of the Internet, thanks.

  10. Story wrong by dhammabum · · Score: 2, Interesting
    McAfee has had VirusScan for Unix available for years. This is not its first "solution", nor does it say so in the press relase....


    --
    I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
  11. Adobe helped put Sklyarov in jail. by jbn-o · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Adobe also helped put Dmitry Sklyarov in jail. Adobe is not an organization we ought to do business with because they treat people so badly. Bad laws don't deserve respect either, and I realize that Adobe is not a legislative body. However, the damage Adobe helped bring on is real, and their actions against Sklyarov show us that they're willing and able to wield that power against others. We should hold in contempt those that would stump for and use the power bad laws give them to stifle our freedoms.