I always figured Nessus was a reference to the Puppeteer in Larry
Niven's Ringworld. After all, the puppeteers as a race are constantly
paranoid about their own safety and security, but Nessus is the one
willing to go out and actually determine how much of a threat the
ringworld might pose to their race.
Maybe it's a bit like folk etymology, but it makes sense to me.
On Tue, 11 Oct 2005, Scott Champine wrote:
According to the book "Nessus Network Auditing" It has nothing to do
with the blood stained robe that killed Hercules. But then the author
goes to explain that he picked it at random from the mythology
encyclopedia so by chance or by choice it's a fitting name for a useful
tool.
Funny thing... for all the months on this mailing list the first thing I
ever answer right has nothing to do with the product.
Scott Champine
Lan Tech II
Peoria Unified School District
(623)486-6127
"Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Albert Einstein
-----Original Message-----
From: nessus-bounces@list.nessus.org
[mailto:nessus-bounces@list.nessus.org] On Behalf Of Jason Haar
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 4:45 PM
To: nessus@list.nessus.org
Subject: Re: followup Qs on license changes
Mercer, Jeff wrote:
Tenable is a company that makes money off of appliances that uses
Nessus. So
they hire programmers to work on Nessus. They've decided to write a
bunch of
proprietary code and create a new version of Nessus and not GPL it. In
other
words, the code has ALREADY FORKED.
You can put an interesting spin on that. If Tenable had come out saying
"Nessus 2 will always be GPL, but we now have a new, improved commercial
product called 'Kentauros', and by the way it's free to use too!", some
people might not have become so upset.
PS: Totally OT, but where did the name Nessus come to be associated with
a vuln scanner? I can't figure any linkage between Centaurs and vuln
scanners. :-)
--
Public key #7BBC68D9 at | Shane Williams
http://pgp.mit.edu/ | System Admin - UT iSchool
=----------------------------------+-------------------------------
All syllogisms contain three lines | shanew@shanew.net
Therefore this is not a syllogism | www.ischool.utexas.edu/~shanew
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