Cisco reseller insults open source

I just received an email from a Cisco vendor who is pitching a new product that Cisco has acquired. Within this email, the vendor discredits open source in a couple different ways. Here is some of the content of that email:
* Scalability – Our operating system supports up to 10k simultaneous connections per appliance regardless of hardware platform. We developed our own OS (AsyncOS) and do not rely on Linux, Sendmail etc.

* Built from the ground up as a Sendmail/open source replacement

* Truly fire and forget – All our spam and virus fighting technology is dynamic and updated every few minutes. We do not rely on any open source technologies, all our technology is developed by IronPort. You will not spend any time updating the appliance or trying to find ways to block new spam, that’s our job.
No thank you, Cisco. I believe that open source is something to be proud of and not the liability that you claim it to be. Cisco claims to have developed their own operating system, but I doubt that they started from scratch. What they probably did is base it on BSD-licensed code, since there is no requirement to redistribute their modifications. This is yet another reason to support the GPL over BSD type licenses.

Comments

  1. Unknown9/11/2007 10:56 PM

    IronPort uses plenty of open source software, so they are plainly talking crap.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alexandre Franke9/12/2007 12:09 AM

    Be careful, you're saying it's Cisco that makes AsyncOS but it's not them. IronPort is the company behind this. Cisco has done nothing wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9/12/2007 12:16 AM

    Thank you for your incredible insight of the BSD license. You knowledge of the subject matter is truly magical as you only base it with one product. That's why I rarely go to Planet Ubuntu anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous9/12/2007 12:53 AM

    I don't see an insult in what you quoted. They merely stressed the fact that they wrote their own OS from the ground up, which they seem to be proud of. It's a known syndrome:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here

    ReplyDelete
  5. anime4christ9/12/2007 1:15 AM

    "We do not rely on any open source technologies, all our technology is developed by IronPort."

    From ironport.com:
    "IronPort started with a FreeBSD kernel and made three major changes."

    Is it just me or is there a contridiction there?

    Submit a story suggestion to Linux.com about this.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous9/12/2007 8:34 AM

    No, there's no contradiction. With technology they are referring to the RELEVANT technology. If they made major changes, they could have made them and the product on top of anything. Whether it is based on FreeBSD or not is really irrelevant.

    You are not reading a scientific article or law text so stop splitting hair.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wedding Photographer9/12/2007 4:46 PM

    Cisco definitely has their own interests in mind whether it's putting the smack down on open source or attacking the used Cisco market.

    I respect manufacturers that have the interests of their users in mind first, but I don't have much respect for Cisco in that regard. Therefore, I rarely trust their whitepapers, pamphlets or sales reps.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Tristan Rhodes9/12/2007 5:16 PM

    I looks like I was right, Ironport is based on FreeBSD.

    Anonymous: I believe that the GPL is more beneficial to the open source community than the BSD license. Why advantages do you see in the BSD license?

    The BSD License Problem
    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous9/13/2007 4:14 PM

    I don't understand how this excerpt "insults open source". It sounds like he/she is merely describing to you some system and how it was created.

    Most likely, you received this from some sales guy, who got this information from some marketing guy, who got this information from ... wherever marketing guys find things.

    Sorry I clicked on your headline. The title is misleading.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous10/30/2007 9:15 PM

    The BSD license is good for stuff like hardware drivers that you want everybody to use, but GPL is good for software and libraries.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous12/30/2007 2:13 AM

    this posting seems somewhat closed minded and it could be taken as an attack on the ironport appliance. i have used the appliances quite extensively (and am a huge supporter/contributor to the open source community) and its my personal opinion that there is no open source solution which can come close to touching ironport. these are hands down the best anti-spam solution i have ever seen. we went from a mail cluster of 30+ servers to a cluster of 4 after deploying 4 of their big daddy devices.

    ReplyDelete

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