17 August 2007, 15:58

Sourcefire acquires ClamAV Project

The ClamAV Project was acquired by US company Sourcefire today (Friday). With ClamAV Antivirus, the company now owns a second popular open source project next to its Intrusion Prevention System Snort.

The ClamAV core development team members are now employed by Sourcefire. However, ClamAV and the virus definition files are to remain under the GPL and will be developed further as open source projects. Sourcefire intends to integrate the antivirus tools into its commercial security products. According to a ClamAV Project FAQ, however, no changes are to be expected for ClamAV software users. The project is expected to benefit from the financial and engineering resources provided by Sourcefire.

Due to the take-over, Sourcefire now owns the rights to the ClamAV Project page and domain, the ClamAV trademarks and the project code contributed by the core development team. Code contributed by others is to remain under the license determined by the author when integrating the code in the project. In accounting for the transaction, Sourcefire anticipates a one-time charge in the third quarter of 2007 of between 0.09 and 0.12 US dollars per share. No further take-over details were published.

The acquisition of ClamAV allows Sourcefire to strengthen its position in the security market. The antivirus product is used in numerous security appliances and Internet gateways, for example for scanning emails. Snort is used for example to protect the computers of US military and secret service.