Sourcefire reels in ClamAV

Security firm Sourcefire has snapped up the ClamAV open source antivirus application.

Sourcefire has acquired the rights to all of ClamAV's code as well as its trademarks and website. All five of ClamAV's main developers will continue to work on the application as employees of Sourcefire.

The security vendor hopes to integrate ClamAV with its open source Snort network security application to produce a new security offering. Clam and Snort will remain open source applications.

"This will broaden our reach and allow us to extend our product family into a number of intriguing new markets," said Sourcefire chief technology officer and founder Martin Roesch.

Sourcefire did not disclose an acquisition price, but said that the deal would cost between 9c and 12c per share. The vendor has only been public for about five months.

Analysts predict that the acquisition will improve Sourcefire's position, and make ClamAV a better product.

"Almost immediately Clam will begin to see engineering and technical support from the Sourcefire team," said 451 Group senior analyst Nick Selby.

"Issues involved in Clam's supply chain - detecting, identifying, writing signatures, testing and pushing out new signatures - will be streamlined and improved."

More importantly, according to Selby, the deal has proved a valuable point about the viability of open source commercial software.

"This extends and builds on Sourcefire's successful Snort efforts, proving that the community/commercial hybrid model can not only work but work in such a way as to support a company which, stock woes aside, is publicly traded," he said.