3 ms·
In a past life I used to work for an anti-virus company who in addition to the Windows product sold the very portable virus-scanning engine for pretty much any
by avar 4y ago
In a past life I used to work for an anti-virus company who in addition to the Windows product sold the very portable virus-scanning engine for pretty much any other OS you could name. I worked in the *nix department, where we ported it to everything from Linux to the BSDs, HP/UX, Solaris & beyond, as well as more obscure setups like z/OS.
So, we sold people software that would run on some fridge-sized Sun machine running Solaris, to ensure that their Solaris machine wasn't about to get infected with the latest Windows virus.
The occasional support calls with technically minded *nix admins were amusing. We knew that what we were selling them was completely useless and made to secret of that fact, they likewise knew that the software they were running was useless to them. The one thing they cared about was that it didn't contribute to the load, and we did our best.
But some PHB somewhere in their organizations had decreed that all computers everywhere must have an anti-virus scanner, and if you're sufficiently motivated to buy something eventually someone will sell it to you, even while telling you that you don't need it :)