"Here's the danger we are running into," said Alan Shimel, Chief Strategy Officer for StillSecure. "People contribute resources to these communities, whether it be time, money, or code. When they see everything they give converted for the commercial success of an individual rather than as a community as a whole, how long do you think they are going to want to keep giving?"

Nessus, maker of one of the most popular open-source vulnerability scanner programs available, changed its licensing agreement with the release of version 3.0.0 on December 12, causing a bit of a stir among security industry players that rely on the code as a component of their commercial solutions. The latest version is not available under the GPL, but instead will be sold as a commercial product.

The recent licensing changes affect a broad spectrum of users, including corporations, the open-source community, and even businesses using services that use Nessus. So what exactly does this mean for open source? Is it the end of the age of innocence? What options do interested parties have going forward?

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