LWN: Comments on "Sophos acquires ActiveState"

Sophos acquires ActiveState to control it's own fate

rjamestaylor — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 23:16:47 +0000

They had to do something, Sophos, that is. With the prevalence of Linux/*BSD on servers and the pending explosing on the desktop markets the lucrative anti-virus market is sure to wane, leading to a cannabalising collapse among the anti-viral companies as they are obviated from existence. So, taking their fate into their own hands, they buy the "open source language" company and begin a process of introducing virus-enabling features into the languages taht allow virus propagation independent of platform. They're protecting their market!

(Yes, I'm kidding -- the above was the cynical consensus of the team of developers I'm sitting with. There's always a darkside. Always)

Sophos acquires anti-spam specialist ActiveState

mwh — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 15:03:17 +0000

That's not how I thought of ActiveState, to be sure.

It'll be interesting to see what happens...

leonbrooks — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 14:58:02 +0000

...when Linux starts making inroads into the virus threat, although Sophos seem happy to sell AV filtering support for Linux and other Open servers. They're very quick off the mark with new IDEs, and while the product is cumbersome to install and manage without some scripts and imagination, it does its job thoroughly and efficiently.