A long time ago, in a land far away, it was the best of times, it was 
the worst of times.

*BSD, Linux, opensource, the ability to port software and freely run 
mail servers, web servers, database servers helped allow the internet to 
grow.
Most of us were working day jobs to pay for our 'hobbies'. (opensource 
didn't pay!)

Along came the IPO craze, and one day, , redhat did an IPO and was worth 
(on paper) more then GM and Ford combined.

Two opensource software packages, two opensource communities in the 
security space started to look to see how they could (rightly so) grab a 
piece of the pie and make  a decent living.

This story has to do with maintaining a good relationship with the 
opensource community.
Maybe some of us contributed nothing more than a few simple patches, or 
were eternal beta testers.  But, no matter how little, or how much was 
contributed, we all felt like we were part of the community.

Yes, there was trepidation when these two companies announced their 
decisions, and some feared the worst.

Those familiar with SNORT and Nessus can see how branching into a dual 
license model can either work for you, or not.

Both products are still around, and since both were opensource, and 
branching and prior GPL code could be used in direvitive products. (and 
there were a couple of branches of both)

sourcefire (company that owns SNORT) and tenable security (who owns 
Nessus) are both still around, and would claim success in their decisions.

Clearly, opensource ONLY is hard for principal authors to make a living 
on the code itself.

normal disclaimers, this is my opinion only, no my company, your mileage 
my vary,void where prohibited or taxed.


-- 
Michael Scheidell, private citizen(tm)

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