Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld) [LWN.net]

ComputerWorld looks into Microsoft's latest acquisition; the RAV technology from Romania's GeCAD Software Srl. "GeCAD's RAV AntiVirus for Mail Servers supports a host of e-mail server products, including the free Sendmail, Qmail and Postfix, and is available for a variety of operating systems, including many flavors of Linux and BSD. Pricing per e-mail domain instead of per mailbox is another major draw, experts and users said." Microsoft plans to discontinue the RAV product line. (Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth)

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Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 19:00 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (7 responses)

I will say that this put a crimp on a big eval I was doing. The product looked like it was written directly for Linux versus some half baked hack that I have seen on others. The fact that it could run on Sendmail, Qmail, and Postfix and the licensing were cream on the top of the cake.

Rather pissed.. but oh well.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 23:29 UTC (Fri) by penguinista (guest, #308) [Link] (2 responses)

Another "so, who cares? development..."

Lets see, I am searching for linux anti-virus alternatives to RAV now:

http://www.centralcommand.com/13062003.html(special offer for RAV refugees)
http://www.f-prot.com/download/
http://www.bitdefender.com/index.php
http://www.pandasoftware.com/com/linux/linux.asp
http://www.avp.ru/
http://www.openantivirus.org/
http://www.sophos.com/
[This from just doing some quick searches, sorry to those I left out]

Anyway, NOT running $MS software along with the growth of webmail clients will eliminate >90% of the problem.
Look for the above companies and many new ones to fill the void that RAV
has left (Symantec, are you listening?) Moving on...

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 15, 2003 17:10 UTC (Sun) by cpm (guest, #3554) [Link]

Who cares?

I care.

We have been swearing by RAV for 2 years.
While all the *other* av vendors have been
strictly reactive, RAV has been putting out
updates hours if not days ahead everyone else.

After one of our consultants, (advocates of
a M$ partner av system) introduced Klez into
our sequel servers during an "update" visit, we were
up all night scubbing our systems down with the
RAV cleaner, while everyone else was rebuilding
from scratch. We lost NOTHING except a few binaries
thanks to RAV.

The RAV sendmail product has been FANTASTIC, the
file server av has been wonderful, everything they
did worked GREAT. On our recommendation, we probably
sold 3 or 4 hundred seats of their av desktop product.

This was a really bad move. RAV rocked, now it will
become just another M$ product.

RAV on linux was just one of the very many reasons why
Samba on linux was just simply better. RAV on sendmail
was just one of the very many reasons why sendmail
on linux let me sleep good when I wasn't at work.

I can't help but think that this move was predicated on
M$'s desire to undermine Linux every way it can. Killing
good Linux products by assimilation helps meet that
end.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 19, 2003 3:02 UTC (Thu) by lonely_bear (subscriber, #2726) [Link]

Actualy you left one out. Haven't had time to take a good look at it yet.
This one is GPLed, using the AV pattern file from OpenAntiVirus
http://clamav.elektrapro.com/

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 14, 2003 10:45 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (3 responses)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this product was configured so well with all those MTAs because it sits as the SMTP server (or rather: an smtp proxy).

Compare that to the recommended configuration of amavis, which is to use the filtering interfaces of postfix/sendmail/exim (no idea about qmail) and check the message while in the queue.

More pain to set-up, but then again, I don't have to trust a propriatary, closed-soruce program to be my SMTP server. Postfix does that much better, thank you.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 14, 2003 12:32 UTC (Sat) by Soruk (guest, #2722) [Link] (2 responses)

Before making my response, I must confess to being the developer of the software mentioned below. Which is why I'm not posting a link.

MailStripper uses the SMTP proxy route - it's an anti-spam filter but also does anti-virus (currently using F-Prot, if enabled). It's checked before your downstream MTA sees the message. So far not a single pathogen has got past it.

It gets the AV scanner to look at the message, and parses the report to determine whether the email should be quarantined or not. This architecture should allow it to be expanded to pretty much any AV offering that can be run on the command line and generate a report.

Currently only F-Prot is supported for AV scanning, but I hope to expand that...

I understand what you're saying about not wanting to trust closed source software (yet you're still having to trust it to AV scan your mail) but so far attempts to persuade the local supermarket to accept source code for groceries have proved fruitless :(

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 14, 2003 13:20 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

What I mean is that the SMTP server is part of the the MTA. It's not just about spam/virii killing. What about the load incurd on my system? What about the paranoid design of qmail (which postfix tries to follow, rather well)?

BTW: amavis tries to use any possible scanner, including f-prot, and including clamav/openantiviros (actually there are a number of branches of amavis, and hence the "try").

Also, ease of installation is no excuse. I have seen linux distros integrate well components that were much more difficult to install (apache, anybody?).

MailStripper, etc.

Posted Jun 15, 2003 0:32 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

This sounds like how MIMEDefang works, except MIMEDefang is GPL'd, and supports about a dozen virus scanners.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 19:48 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (2 responses)

Another example of one of the wonderful features of the business mind. I wonder how much less gasoline/oil/coal we would be consuming today, were it not for jerk moves like these.

Why do govt's allow people to pull this kind of thing, anyway?

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 23:38 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

Why do govt's allow people to pull this kind of thing, anyway?

What kind of thing? Offer a product and then stop offering it? Sell to the highest bidder instead of the most deserving?

I guess individual freedom has a lot to do with it.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 14, 2003 3:41 UTC (Sat) by donstuart (guest, #4550) [Link]

You're kidding, right?

The questionable "thing" is the "buy and shutdown" strategy used by a powerful company to attack potential competition. This isn't quite as clear as buying and closing, for example, Redhat, but is suspicuous for a convicted monopolist.

I don't think they would have done it if the government had a real interest in anti-trust but I don't expect them to get any flack.

Don

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 20:34 UTC (Fri) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339) [Link] (1 responses)

I received an email this morning in response to my direct query about ongoing support. The response was (looking for the exact reply, which I seem to have "wisely" deleted :[ ) positive that GeCad would honor its obligations on all platforms. Whether they will sign NEW obligations was not stated.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 20:39 UTC (Fri) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339) [Link]

here it is:

Date: 13 Jun 2003 13:10:16 -0000 
From: RAV Customer Support <customer@ravantivirus.com> 
Subject: RE: Re: Important RAV Announcement 
To: spamme@rjamestaylor.com 

Dear Robert, 

Thank you for your message. 

GeCAD will honour its obligations towards its customers. Therefore we will 
continue to offer technical support, virus signatures, outbreak alerts and 
advisories, triggered updates to all our registered customers, as usually, for 
all our products (no matter of the platform). 

Please address any technical inquiry you might have to our Technical Support 
department at support@ravantivirus.com. 

-- 
Xxxx Xxxxxxxx
Marketing Assistant

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 21:50 UTC (Fri) by jabby (guest, #2648) [Link] (3 responses)

Yet another reason for companies selling for the Linux platform to Open Source their software! If RAV had been Open Source, then Microsoft could only have purchased control over *future* releases and volunteers or another company could have picked up and run with the Open Source code. All those happy Linux customers wouldn't be stranded and wouldn't now have to spend time finding an alternate solution.

Other companies have managed to do it. MySQL, Ghostscript, Snort, etc.

I would think that the community would tend to reward companies that release some version (even time-delayed, feature-reduced, etc.) of the product under an Open Source license.

One might argue that they wouldn't have received this grand offer from Microsoft if they'd adopted this strategy, but it sounds like they were doing just fine before they got bought! They really didn't need the money... So, in the end they may have done as much harm as good for the Linux community.

Shame on them for selling out. Unless they reinvest it all in Linux development, of course... :-)

Jason

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 22:19 UTC (Fri) by jmorris42 (guest, #2203) [Link]

The case is even stronger for an AV vendor since the 'product' is just a loss leader to sell the virus library on a recurring basis. A virus scanner without frequent updates is a menace.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 14, 2003 10:17 UTC (Sat) by banshee_dk (guest, #10290) [Link] (1 responses)

If you mean free software, then call it that. Don't use the term Open Source, if you mean that they should have released it under the GPL (or similar).
Open Source means nothing but that the source code is open. It is NOT securing your freedom to develop. Because if the program is not free software, you get sued for using the source code, it being Open Source or not.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 14, 2003 21:44 UTC (Sat) by skybrian (guest, #365) [Link]

Actually, the official definition of open source specifically guarantees that you can release derived works, so you should be okay with any license that meets the open source definition. But I suppose if you're using the term loosely, all bets are off. And of course you should read and understand the license, since the specific terms do matter.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 14, 2003 13:13 UTC (Sat) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link]

If Microsoft's stated reason for acquiring this company is to acquire the programmers, how long will these individuals want to stay with their new boss before handing in their notice ? What is the company worth with few customers wanting its products on Windows and no skilled staff remaining ? If Microsoft wants to throw its money away by buying companies which it then gives the kiss of death to, then as far as I can see this simply hastens the welcome day when M$ goes belly up as another dot com financial failure.

Linux to kill Microsoft

Posted Jun 15, 2003 10:53 UTC (Sun) by ajtucker (guest, #11974) [Link]

subject says it all