
ClamXav just went commercial, no open source version - nieve
https://www.clamxav.com/changetocommercialsoftware
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korginator
How ready are they to go commercial? The update process has been extremely
flaky at best, over the past several years. On many machines, I've had to
uninstall and reinstall the software for it to make any sort of connection to
its updates servers.

It's not clear what their value proposition is when compared to the other well
established commercial & free AV vendors. Some like sophos are quite light and
unobtrusive.

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eximius
Oh lord, I misinterpreted this as ClamAV going commercial. :phew:

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huxley
I had my freakout about ClamAV back when I found out it is owned by Cisco:

[http://blog.clamav.net/2013/10/cisco-community-and-open-
sour...](http://blog.clamav.net/2013/10/cisco-community-and-open-source.html)

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tptacek
I'm curious why anyone would run ClamAV on their Mac. Is this just for IT
compliance?

~~~
protomyth
Basically, so the Mac doesn't become a "carrier". Generally, the mail and file
servers should detect the virus, but Macs also have AirDrop and there are the
various cloud file transfers that have varying levels of virus scans.

We do have the problem of Mac malware, but I don't think ClamAV does anything
for that.

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nieve
It successfully detected the adware now bundled with MPlayerX. My partner and
I would probably both have spotted it, but if it was a silent installer
instead of a deceptive click-through there would have been zero sign until the
adware was already on the system. These days a lot of threats seem to be
formerly semi-reputable entities deciding to sell out and voluntarily include
malware/adware. I'm sure more than a few people have been saved from
Sourceforge's choice to do it to other people's software as well. Viruses and
worms aren't that common on Macs, but deceptive malware & trojans are all over
the place.

~~~
protomyth
That's good to know. I don't have many folks downloading stuff on the Mac
side, but as you note, its a pretty common problem.

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qnaal
is it substantially more than a graphical frontend to clamav?

and since clamav is GPL, does that mean subscribers get rights to the source?

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huxley
Doesn't seem like it, it's a GUI app that runs CLI commands and flags for
ClamAV, which is separately installed, according to Mark Allan, the developer
of ClamXav:

[https://www.clamxav.com/BB/viewtopic.php?p=2386#p2386](https://www.clamxav.com/BB/viewtopic.php?p=2386#p2386)

ClamXav was never open-source, it was previously freeware/donationware.

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Zaephyr
The purchase page says that it for non-commercial use; no link to a commercial
version. Looks like it is still free in the App Store FWIW.

~~~
yabatopia
At the bottom of the Store page is a link to the Commercial Store for
commercial licenses. No initial launch discounts there. There's also an
Education Store.

