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Comment by ihsw2 | Hacker News Reader

The article decries balkanization of tech services but it noticeably omits a middle path -- offering consulting services for open source software.

Surely, in this aspect, it stands to reason that this section of the tech services industry is more robust in the face of such an encroachment. The only losers in such a situation are the likes of Symantec, whom claim secrecy and obfuscation are a feature rather than a bug.

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It would make more sence to make the code open source but not free - anyone can see but nobody can use the code.

The term open source implies the code is free. Simply having the source available does not make it open source.

And how would you enforce that? What would prevent anyone with access to the code from building it and using it? I don't see any way except maybe stripping the code of significant parts

You could keep the virus fingerprint database outside the codebase. Customers would then pay for access (and updates) to the fingerprints.

The fingerprints have to be some sorts of data, like regular expressions or other limited instruction set which can only parse the incoming file and not communicate with outside world.

The company could automatically release fingerprints into the open after a time, say 6 months.

So... stripping the code of significant parts

This seems like a pretty good business model idea though!

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