F-Prot for Windows development stoped?

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lover

Does anyone know if F-Prot for Windows gets still developed? I think
version three came out the last millenium and now they are still at 3.14b?
What will be the next big Windows release? 3.14c at the end of this year? It
seems the only F-Prot versions they care about are those for unix and linux.
 
Does anyone know if F-Prot for Windows gets still developed? I think
version three came out the last millenium and now they are still at 3.14b?
What will be the next big Windows release? 3.14c at the end of this year?
It seems the only F-Prot versions they care about are those for unix and
linux.
Click to expand...


I normally find their mailing lists have a "pattern". There'll be no
activity for a while (obviously due to development) and then I get 3 or 4
through in the space of maybe 2-3 weeks where they release versions for
various platforms.

AFAIK, the *nix side of F-Prot is "new" (or at least publically).. so this
might be the reason you see more *nix application updates than windoze as
it's been a DOS and windoze product for a long time.. and the code may
have less bugs / work required as it's already code that's more "mature".

They definitely don't appear to stop supporting windoze.. this is where
all the action happens as such.. that'd be cutting off your nose to spite
your face IMO to stop windoze support now.

I have no affiliation with Frisk so my text above is pure opinion and my
thoughts alone =)



Regards,

Ian
 
Does anyone know if F-Prot for Windows gets still developed? I think
version three came out the last millenium and now they are still at
3.14b? What will be the next big Windows release? 3.14c at the end of
this year? It seems the only F-Prot versions they care about are those
for unix and linux.
Click to expand...

Don't know, but there is no reason to make a major version number change
unless they feel that they have made major programming changes. Maybe the
same scanning techniques still work. And if it isn't broke, why fix it?

They are publishing updates very frequently, and that's what really
counts.

They don't seem interested in becoming a toolbox (like Norton), but are
sticking to their specialty. My guess is that they are depending mostly on
subscriptions, not initial purchases, for cash flow. So there isn't any
motivation to create a new 'version' to sell.
 
There's a lot of room for improvements:

- Incremental signature updates
- Access to Sheduler and Updater through the RealTime Protector icon.
There's no need to have more than one icon in the tray.
- Refurbished interface. Do away this nineties style.
- For the peace of mind: the possibility to scan every filetype through the
context menu.
 
There's a lot of room for improvements:

- Incremental signature updates
Click to expand...

Do a Google search Frisk mentioned that incremental updates are planned
for version 4 a few months ago IIRC.
- Access to Sheduler and Updater through the RealTime Protector icon.
There's no need to have more than one icon in the tray.
- Refurbished interface. Do away this nineties style.
- For the peace of mind: the possibility to scan every filetype through the
context menu.
Click to expand...

What makes you think that Frisk & company aren't working on these
things?

--
Cheers-

Jeff Setaro
jasetaro <at> mags.net
http://people.mags.net/jasetaro/
PGP Key IDs DH/DSS: 0x5D41429D RSA: 0x599D2A99 New RSA: 0xA19EBD34
 
lover schreef:
Does anyone know if F-Prot for Windows gets still developed? I think
version three came out the last millenium and now they are still at 3.14b?
What will be the next big Windows release? 3.14c at the end of this year? It
seems the only F-Prot versions they care about are those for unix and linux.
Click to expand...

Oh, but isn't that better than Symantec's practice, which seems to
consist in selling a slightly improved (oh well, not always) product as
a wholly new version?
 
lover schreef:
- Refurbished interface. Do away this nineties style.
Click to expand...

I don't use the Windows version so I couldn't care less. Still one can
only hope that if they are working on a new interface, they won't
succumb to the temptation of making it dependent on IE or as bloated as
that of NAV for example.
 
Does anyone know if F-Prot for Windows gets still developed?
Click to expand...

IIRC they posted here (or in acv) not too long ago that the dos
version was the only one not being developed.


Jim.
 
Don't know, but there is no reason to make a major version number change
unless they feel that they have made major programming changes. Maybe the
same scanning techniques still work. And if it isn't broke, why fix it?

They are publishing updates very frequently, and that's what really
counts.
Click to expand...
I must say, it's nice to see praise for good ol' F-PROT rather than the eternal
damnation heaped upon some of the other software. I'm perfectly happy
with F-PROT for DOS and I hope Frisk doesn't succumb to a case of the bloats.
 
Sure it's better - I don't want to go it Symantecs way. But now F-Prot for
Windows seems to be in that part of a softwares life where it doesn't get's
developed any longer although still sporadically patches come out. Though
such software is actually dead, the manufacturer usually refuses any
comments and on the newsgroups rumors keep popping up about "something big
is about to come" and "it's not dead". The really true believers among the
users don't even want any changes because:

"why change it if it's not broke?"

It reminds me so much of the situation Adobe keeps FrameMaker in. In
adobe.framemaker is a wishlist thread with feature requests for the next
version which now has a few hundred postings and actually every poster knows
that their wishes will never be implemented. It's so sad.

Maybe the above is a bit exaggerated. I like F-Prot and the FRISK company
and love Iceland because it has no army but fairies and what not - but
F-Prot for Windows really needs a facelift and not just some Botox.
 
lover schreef:
Sure it's better - I don't want to go it Symantecs way. But now F-Prot for
Windows seems to be in that part of a softwares life where it doesn't get's
developed any longer although still sporadically patches come out. Though
such software is actually dead, the manufacturer usually refuses any
comments and on the newsgroups rumors keep popping up about "something big
is about to come" and "it's not dead". The really true believers among the
users don't even want any changes because:

"why change it if it's not broke?"
Click to expand...

Exactly. It works fine, why change it? It has always been like this;
they have always stinted on major releases. :-)

Okay, so it needs some improvements here and there. But there is nothing
dramatic.
 
James Egan schreef:
IIRC they posted here (or in acv) not too long ago that the dos
version was the only one not being developed.
Click to expand...

What a pity.

I fear the day where only GUI scanners will be available. That will be
the Apocalypse, celebrated with fireworks of bloat.
 
lover said:
Does anyone know if F-Prot for Windows gets still developed? I think
version three came out the last millenium and now they are still at 3.14b?
What will be the next big Windows release?
Click to expand...

3.15 is due soon, but that will probably be the last of the 3.x series
- most of the Windows development team is busy working on version 4.0

-frisk
 
3.15 is due soon, but that will probably be the last of the 3.x series
- most of the Windows development team is busy working on version 4.0

-frisk
Click to expand...

Do you have an estimate of the future of F-Prot DOS? A time when it
will no longer be useful on Win 9x/ME PCs since it no longer has the
capabiity of detecting/handling all the malware the Windows version
handles? Is this time near or rather far off? Will there be a version
4.0 of F-Prot DOS?


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg
 
(e-mail address removed) schreef:
Do you have an estimate of the future of F-Prot DOS? A time when it
will no longer be useful on Win 9x/ME PCs since it no longer has the
capabiity of detecting/handling all the malware the Windows version
handles? Is this time near or rather far off? Will there be a version
4.0 of F-Prot DOS?
Click to expand...

Or at least a command line version?
 
(e-mail address removed) (Fridrik Skulason) wrote:

[...]
3.15 is due soon, but that will probably be the last of the 3.x series
- most of the Windows development team is busy working on version 4.0
Click to expand...

Will there be a version not vulnerable by ZIP bombs (e.g. 42.ZIP)?

Will the command line version be continued/improved (e.g. long file
names _and_ "scanning all local disks"?

Oliver
 
James Egan schreef:


What a pity.

I fear the day where only GUI scanners will be available. That will be the
Apocalypse, celebrated with fireworks of bloat.
Click to expand...


There's still fpcmd.exe =)

Most of the time, I never used the GUI scanner either (although it's a lot
nicer than the crap that Norton produce IMO).. I started with F-Prot on
DOS and was always "brought up" in command line environments so find that
fpcmd.exe does the trick just nicely =)



Regards,

Ian
 
Oliver Betz said:
(e-mail address removed) (Fridrik Skulason) wrote:
Click to expand...
Will there be a version not vulnerable by ZIP bombs (e.g. 42.ZIP)?
Click to expand...

We are adding bzip scanning, and due to the apperance of some bzip
bombs, we added a feature which should solve this problem - it will
work as well for 42.ZIP and other similar files.
Will the command line version be continued/improved (e.g. long file
names
Click to expand...

Uhm....what do you mean - the command-line scanner (fpcmd.exe) *has*
long file name handling - it has been supported there since the
beginning.

_and_ "scanning all local disks"

That's not on the to-do list - probably because no customers have
requested that feature.

-frisk
 
We are adding bzip scanning, and due to the apperance of some bzip
bombs, we added a feature which should solve this problem - it will
Click to expand...
^^^^^^^^^?
IMHO, the best would be a configurable timeout, with a nonzero return
value when it triggers.
Uhm....what do you mean - the command-line scanner (fpcmd.exe) *has*
long file name handling - it has been supported there since the
beginning.

_and_ "scanning all local disks"
Click to expand...

at the moment, I can either use the Windows version supporting long
filenames, but no "scan all local disks", _or_ the DOS version not
able to scan deep directories. To scan a system automatically (e.g. at
logon or with scheduler), one needs some scripting stuff.
That's not on the to-do list - probably because no customers have
requested that feature.
Click to expand...

[x] request <g>. Does it help to submit it at
http://www.f-prot.com/support/contact_support.html ?

On this occasion some more suggestions for fpcmd.exe:

It would be nice to have simpler access to fpcmd.exe. As far as I see,
I have to download and _install_ the whole F-Prot for Windows package
to get fpcmd? Bad enough that it costs more than three times the
amount of the DOS version, but I really don't want to _install_ the
Windows version since I see no advantage in using it.

Output filtering "unsupported compression method", "in use by another
application", "unknown file format", "in use by another application"
and maybe "encrypted" lines. Not everybody has perl, sed or awk
running to perform this with minimum effort. A typical Windows
instalation installs so many of these lines that the logfile is nearly
unuseable.

Oliver
 
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