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Officials at Untangle are planning a face off between open-source and proprietary anti-virus products at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in August.
Untangle, a provider of open-source network security tools, is hosting “The Untangle AV Fight Club,” a head-to-head competition between open-source Clam Antivirus (ClamAV) and proprietary products from SonicWall, McAfee and others. The test will take place Aug. 8 at LinuxWorld in San Francisco.
Dirk Morris, chief technology officer and founder of Untangle, said testing labs have not given open-source projects like ClamAV a fair shake, explaining that some refused to publicize any test results regarding the product.
Untangle, in San Mateo, Calif., has embedded ClamAV for virus protection in its Untangle Gateway platform. When the four-year-old companys researchers tested ClamAV, they uncovered significant differences between it and other products.
“It was absolutely not the same at all,” Morris said.
Untangle competes chiefly with SonicWall and WatchGuard. The company released an open-source version of its core product, The Untangle Gateway Platform, earlier this year to reach out to the small and midsize business market. The product is built around more than 30 open-source projects, including SpamAssassin, ClamAV and Snort.
The test will evaluate products on several criteria, including virus identification and resource expenditure. Untangle is calling on anyone interested to submit viruses for the test, with the stipulation that the viruses have to be those still found in the wild.
Submissions can be submitted via the Web, but will also be taken at the event.
“As long as it comes from the wild…people can submit it up to the last minute,” Morris said. “I have a sneaking suspicion of whats going to happen [at LinuxWorld].”
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