The author of NESSUS, a security scanning tool, has decided he has had enough of GNU. Given my feelings on the GNU license I find this pretty humorous.
I especially liked this comment which IMO helps debunk one of the big reasons people say that source code should be open to everyone…
“Virtually nobody has ever contributed anything to improve the scanning engine over the last six years,” he wrote, noting that there had been minor exceptions.
and points out one of the reasons I think many businesses will never seriously embrace GNU
“A number of companies are using the source code against us, by selling or renting appliances, thus exploiting a loophole in the GPL,” he wrote in a later e-mail, justifying his decision. “So in that regard, we have been fueling our competition, and we want to put an end to that. Nessus 3 contains an improved engine, and we don’t want our competition to claim to have improved ‘their’ scanner.”
Note I am not against open source. Just the way the GNU license is layed out.
