Open Source vs Proprietary

Hi all,

 

Sorry everyone, forgive my ignorance, but I'm still a bit confused on
these issues - I don't understand why anyone would buy a firewall that
has a cost associated with it rather than just taking a bog standard pc
and installing an open source firewall on it, such as IPCop or OpenBSD
PF.

 

> From the responses to my post about IPCop and the messages about
OpenBSD, it looks like these options are as secure as you're going to
get.

 

Perhaps it might be easier to configure proprietary firewalls, and they
might give better logging and analysis options, but presumably,
certainly with IPCop, and I would assume, with OpenBSD, you can find
adequate Open Source options that will provide any of the functions that
the other firewalls do (with the exception of ISA2004, which sounds like
it works with the applications rather than the packets....) - like e.g.
snort.

 

Do people just buy firewalls because they can't be bothered to learn to
set up Open Source systems, or is there more to this that I'm missing?

 

Many thanks,

 

Joe