On Mar 02, 2005, at 05:02, Steffen Heil wrote:
Hi
I've just rebuilt ClamAV from source on an FC1 and a Mac OSX server after making minor source code edits, the time involved on both machines was less than 15 minutes, this also included a complete rebuild of Apache and PHP on the Mac (I have fast machines) so using old and outdated software because your waiting on an updated RPM doesn't make any logical sense.
You miss the point.
This is not about having less work to update, this is about having NO work
to update.
An example:
We so have some Windows servers running since years which use McAfee
VirusScan Enterprise 7.0.
It loads DAT-File (definitions) a few times a day (as freshclam does).
But it also loads Engine-Updates every few months.
Some of these servers have not been touched for more than a year. It simply
works.
Your talking about windows machines and support features, while mcafee does offer a mac package, it does utilize the same dat files I believe but, the programmers were lazy and did not build the same engine update support so you have to manually download and install engine updates and pushing better support features for the windows platform is only beneficial to you and others running windows.
This is what should be archieved, IMHO.
Exspecially on virus scanner updates, I would think it is very important to
have that, because most administrators of smaller systems will NOT monitor
which versions become available and will immediately update everything,
exspecially when compiling is involved. Most admins of small companies need
to do this additionally to their primary job and only work on it, if
required. For most of them "required" is just then, when a new virus already
made it into their system.
I know, it would be better to have full time admins which keep track and
update immediately, but this is life.
McAfee DOES a great job on this - even though I assume this is way easier on
windows. (Yes, I assume this IS an advantage of windows.)
Anyway, there must be a way to give this advantage to linux users. Not using
libraries but statically linking all required dependencies would put more
memory footprint to the system, but would make engine update schemes
possible.
This might become possible utilizing a fink type of foot-print to handle downloading of updated source files and building on the fly or modifying freshclam to handle this, it then creates more burden on the providers to program something that is outside the scope of their package based on the lazyness of the end user and this doesn't seem fair to to them when this is all provided for free.
Think about it.
This doesn't require a lot of thought, it does make logical sense however, supporting multiple platforms means the offering source and building could only be circumvented by the authors providing unilateral and equilateral support for platforms/OS's and environments that becomes non-feasible without financial support and are forced to charge for their product to offset these expenditures.
Regards, Steffen
-- Dale
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