Probably only good things. Snort now is really not optimized and case only problems. Lets all hope it will be better now. But for giving a real answer I will ask the support tomorrow and if there is an answer for that already I will inform here.
I don't think the purchase of Snort by Cisco will change anything in the short term; all the companies (including direct competitors of Cisco's) using Snort likely have contracts in place that guarantee services / licensing be provided for an extended term despite who owns the company. I also find it unlikely that they (Cisco) would change anything significantly regarding Sourcefire's commercial offerings to 3rd parties for quite a while, nice to have the extra revenue stream [:)]
I wouldn't be surprised, however, if Sophos and other companies that relied on Sourcefire develop their own IPS engines at some point... I imagine many of them are already doing that anyway. There are also 1 or 2 other (may be more that I'm not familiar with) other open source projects for competing IPS systems out there.
I don't think the purchase of Snort by Cisco will change anything in the short term; all the companies (including direct competitors of Cisco's) using Snort likely have contracts in place that guarantee services / licensing be provided for an extended term despite who owns the company. I also find it unlikely that they (Cisco) would change anything significantly regarding Sourcefire's commercial offerings to 3rd parties for quite a while, nice to have the extra revenue stream [:)]
I wouldn't be surprised, however, if Sophos and other companies that relied on Sourcefire develop their own IPS engines at some point... I imagine many of them are already doing that anyway. There are also 1 or 2 other (may be more that I'm not familiar with) other open source projects for competing IPS systems out there.
