Ron, what do you have to say to explain some comments posted on Slashdot by a contributor, along these lines:

First of all, according to multiple sources, apparently the reason why there isn't a significant number of free plugins is because Renaud et al simply don't accept them, or when they do accept them, they substantially rewrite them enough such that a non-free version is what eventually makes it into the source. Now, I don't know this from personal experience -- and Renaud et al are welcome to deny this -- but this preference for suppressing the GPL component of Nessus has been strong enough that contributed free plugins have been suppressed because of overlap with non-free.

Such behavior does not grow a developer community. Tenable has implied that there's alot of leeches out there, and while indeed they have to suffer the most pernicious of parasites (companies that just rebrand their code!), ***** there's good evidence that says the reason they don't get much code from the community is that they supposedly refuse what they do get. *****

I wouldn't speak up on this, but I have to balance my continuing appreciation for Renaud et al's work (which, mind you, still has a very nice license for our needs) against the need to stem accusations that nobody ever tried to give back to Nessus. People have tried.


----------

To me, Ron, this sounds as if you really didnt understand true Open Source, you rejected contributed code, took the ideas from it (some woudl say "stole the ideas"), and rewrote it in code that you could take private.

No wonder you werent getting contributions anymore - you abuse developers like that, and pretty soon they stop giving you their ideas to steal.

Good luck running your business with what some would say is a fundamental dishonesty at the core.

[ reply ]

Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/371/32741#32741