MPP and Beyond

ClamAV has sold to Sourcefire. Another interesting development in the ever changing landscape of the open source myth. The myth being that a few guys in a farmhouse in Eastern Europe or 16 year old kids in their bedroom tirelessly crank out code for the betterment of society.

The clamav team is truly one of the best in open source and I hope they all made a lot of money, but this development sheds even more light on the motivations to develop and support open source by education, institutions, venture capital and large corporations - done right, open source can make money. It can take out a giant, like the Mozilla organization, IBM and others are trying to do to MSFT, it can kill small competitors, it can commoditize profit centers, while it contributes great free software. But the catch is that it needs very deep pockets to finance it, which by in large, it has.

So good news for the ClamAV guys. I wish them the best. All you guys that have buried clamav in your commercial software, it may be a good time to revisit that idea!

Technorati Tags: clamav, sourcefire, open source