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Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire OpenDNS
- nifoc 11y agoNon-paywalled article: http://www.securityweek.com/cisco-acquire-opendns-635-million http://www.securityweek.com/cisco-acquire-opendns-635-millio...
- jdorfman 11y agoThank you sir
- omh 11y agoLink via Google, to avoid paywall: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&url=http://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-to-buy-network-security-company-opendns-1435668508 http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&url=http://www.w...
- blfr 11y agoI don't like the fact that mainstream publications (NYT, WSJ, Grauniad) show up on HN this often, especially the paywalled ones, but at this point just have your browser forge referrals for WSJ and always tell it you're coming from Google. There's refcontrol[1] for Firefox. There are other options for Chrome[2]. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/refcontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/refcontrol/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9531941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9531941
- cpncrunch 11y agoI'm curious as to why people on HN upvote WSJ stories so much. The WSJ version of this story has more upvotes than other publications. Do the HN readers who upvote this paywalled stuff actually pay for WSJ subscriptions?
- hkmurakami 11y agoIt's because "people on HN" is not a monolithic group.
- cpncrunch 11y agoMany more people on HN upvote WSJ stories over similar stories on other publications. So "people on HN" is accurate, as it appears to reflect the majority opinion here.
- arca_vorago 11y ago1. Don't link paywall articles like that, it's really annoying. 2. Is it sad that while OpenDNS has been a handy stopgap for me while I get other options in place, my first thought is "well, there goes OpenDNS..." I spent quite a bit of my earlier tech days as a Cisco admin, so I have grown to hate them with a fiery passion only reserved for entities that buck/subvert standards and license companies to death because they have market dominance.
- allenbrunson 11y ago> 1. Don't link paywall articles like that, it's really annoying. the management of this site has said many times that they are fine with paywalled submissions. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9796231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9796231
- sergiosgc 11y ago> 2. Is it sad that while OpenDNS has been a handy stopgap for me while I get other options in place, my first thought is "well, there goes OpenDNS..." I'm quite happy with dnsmadeeasy. It's a paid service, but cheap enough to compete with the time cost of me setting up DNS on my own servers. Slowly, I've been more and more adept of paying for the services I do use. Also, more and more, there are good SaaS offerings at the price point that doesn't make me think too much about the expense (up to 50USD/year).
- omh 11y agoThis is an interesting buy for Cisco. The corporate/small business tier of OpenDNS looks like a good fit with some of their products. But do they have any other freemium services like the personal/family tiers of OpenDNS? I can't think of any.
- m-app 11y agoCisco also plans to go big on IoT and this will integrate nicely.
- higherpurpose 11y agoAnd there goes the "Open" part of OpenDNS. With Cisco's strong ties to the NSA and with its general attitude of supporting censorship in many countries around the world, I'd stay away from using OpenDNS' servers from now on. I think https://www.opennicproject.org https://www.opennicproject.org is a nice alternative. I'd probably be very vigilant about their future contributions to Libsodium as well.
- lcswi 11y agoWhat was open about it? I always felt weird with the combination of 'open' in the name and then tracking and advertising heavily.
- snowpanda 11y agoopennic is indeed very nice
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoIts never been Open. Its a proprietary service now and will be after the acquisition.
- jedisct1 11y agolibsodium is a personal project that has nothing to do with them. I don't even think they are using it for anything. Being paid to work on opensource projects is a dream of many, but it rarely happens :(
- g-clef 11y agoFYI, opennic is far more than just an alternative resolver to OpenDNS. OpenNIC is running an alternative set of roots, with TLDs that aren't agreed to by the regular DNS-managing bodies (like ICANN). That may be fine with you (opinion on ICANN's handling of new TLD's is a subject for another time), but be aware that you're seeing a different DNS with opennic than you would be with OpenDNS or google's 8.8.8.8
- mitkok 11y agoSometimes I think there are literally people working for the shitty WSJ posting here
- barlescabbage 11y agoDavid Ulevitch is one of the nicest people in Tech. Couldn't be happier for him. This is great news
- jedisct1 11y agoHe definitely is, and he changed my life. Working at OpenDNS has been my best life experience ever.
- al_ 11y agoI can attest to this. Karma is indeed a thing it seems!
- huhtenberg 11y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidu https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidu
- Someone1234 11y agoWonderful, another product for Cisco to buy and ruin (see Linksys). OpenDNS was good because it offered an alternative choice to Google's DNS and allowed you to do basic parental control filtering at the DNS level (which is surprisingly effective).
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y agoWell not google images or youtube. Or am I wrong?
- stephengillie 11y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9804877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9804877
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jackgavigan 11y agoDamn, I thought OpenDNS would merge with CloudFlare and then take over Avast to create a new cloud security giant... :-/
- ljoshua 11y agoI sincerely hope that Cisco keeps the OpenDNS Home free offering around, as it's by far the best filtering service for families I've used. Sign up, block inappropriate categories through the service, and point your router to the DNS IPs and you're done. (Oh, and grab the IP autoupdater.) Keeping the kids (and adults) safe is my favorite aspect of OpenDNS. From the "we just got acquired" FAQ: > The free service will continue to operate. It’s part of who we are, and Cisco loves who we are. We wouldn’t have entered into this agreement if we believed our free service would be in jeopardy. On contrary, Cisco’s commitment back to you is to maintain OpenDNS’s DNS services exactly as it is today. In their words: “This level of service for all users is a priority.”
- nateabele 11y ago> In their words: “This level of service for all users is a priority.” And were those words in a press release, or a contract? > If we believed our free service would be in jeopardy. [emphasis added] Oh look, good intentions. I'm sure everything will be fine then. </sarc> Question: if it's based on bad experience, repeated ad nauseam, is it still called cynicism?
- kyrra 11y agoI was part of a company purchased by Cisco 2 years ago that has an open source component (Snort[0]). Cisco is continuing to invest in the open source product since it acquired Sourcefire. The big things being Snort 3.0 [1] (rewrite to allow multi-threading inside a single process), and OpenAppId[2] (application detection using Lua). These are things they could have kept internal but they continued to invest in the open source version. I think Cisco realizes that giving some stuff away with opensource helps build confidence with the tech community, it would be stupid for them to kill off these kinds of products and services. [0] https://snort.org/ https://snort.org/ [1] https://snort.org/snort3 https://snort.org/snort3 [2] http://newsroom.cisco.com/release/1354502 http://newsroom.cisco.com/release/1354502
- nateabele 11y agoThat's promising, and I'm glad to hear it. And, while it's certainly prudent of them, they seem like an outlier in that regard. To me the discussion is more about the principle: we're relying on Cisco's (or whoever else's) benevolence (and/or competence). Without writing an essay on the stakeholder theory of value, I just want to say that it'd sure be nice if the users of a service were regarded in some way that's more formal than an FAQ & reassurances.
- tzakrajs 11y agoI bet their employees are rich now and the culture is going to be even better than ever.
- danielweber 11y agoHow many employees had 0.1% equity?
- xxdesmus 11y agoThey'd be dumb to shut down the consumer DNS product. It's a goldmine of useful security data they can funnel back into their other products. Also, DNS doesn't cost much to run.
- danielweber 11y agoCisco acquiring security companies? It's like the 1990s all over again. :)
- declan 11y agoCongrats to David Ulevitch for building a great company and taking it to a successful conclusion! Well done. I could tell he was on a good trajectory when he hired away one of my more capable colleagues at a previous employer. :)
- rahimnathwani 11y agoCongrats to the OpenDNS team. I hope you continue the awesome OpenLate meetups (http://www.meetup.com/OpenLate/ http://www.meetup.com/OpenLate/).
- philip1209 11y agoThanks! The plan is to continue them indefinitely! (I started OpenLate)
- wityak 11y agoThis seems like a pretty great purchase. Is there anything other than Cisco's licensing model that people truly don't like them for?
- MichaelGG 11y agoThe way they handled security when that guy made shellcode for IOS was pretty reprehensible. Apart from flat out refusing to believe it at first, I believe they tried to get him fired as well as using legal tactics. And in licensing model, be sure to include adding checks to lock out fair competiton ("genuine" checks). There's probably some other shitty things they've done that I'm not recalling ATM. But otherwise? Well I probably am partial to what I first learned. But I recently tried Fortinet, and the configuration is so braindead stupid, I felt bad for all the times I got annoyed with Cisco.
- worklogin 11y agoLicensing is huge for not-a-mama-papa company. Support is also a bear. I can't think of a time Cisco has significantly improved an acquisition in the near term.
- nullrouted 11y agoCongrats to davidu and team, you folks made an awesome product and I'm excited to see how Cisco can integrate it in their products as well as what they plan on doing with it in the future.
- intrasight 11y agoOpenDNS is a great service. It has been my DNS server for at least 6 months now. I've turned off Tumblr, Facebook, Techcrunch, WSJ, NYTimes, & many others - but not Hacker News. Still, it has greatly minimized my web distractions.