Nessus going closed sourece, two GPL projects forked
It’s old news that nessus is going cloesd source for two reasons
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Virtually nobody has ever contributed anything to improve the scanning _engine_ over the last 6 years. I’m not talking about shoe-horning DB support in nessusd, but really to contribute things which make the scans faster, or Nessus more powerful.
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A number of companies are _using_ the source code against us, by selling or renting appliances, thus exploiting a loophole in the GPL. So in that regard, we have been fueling our own competition and we want to put an end to that.
The nessus will (or so they say) continue to bee free as in “free beer”.
I have somewhat mixed feelings about that. I can understand why they dont want to support opensource nessus, but i am afraid that more and more additions will not be free.
Not to mention that its harder to trust closed source security tool.
So I guess I am not the only one thinking that since, there are two (active) projects, GNessus and Porz-Wahen that will pick up the existing GPL code and develop it further.
I am not sure, wheather authors, intend to join forces or not, or even if they are aware of eachother.
Aditional takes on this:
- Fyodor of nmap fame
- Single-company free software
- Is Open Source Nessus Closing Its Source?
- Nessus security tool closes its source
- Nessus3 Will Not be Released Under the GPL
- Nessus creator challenging the community
- Nessus 3.0 to abandon GPL licensing
PS: There are some other projects, but it seems thees two are most pupular. (Segusius, gpl nessus plugins .)
