free AV needed for a non-profit?

[Frank_G]

Can you recommend a free antivirus program to run on a small network (of
about 8x Win98 machines) at a not-for-profit organization? I will install it
on each machine if necessary.

I checked out pricelessware.org and the two programs that seem worth
considering are AVG & Avast! Can anyone with experience make a
recommendation?

posted on the 24hr help and av newsgroups too.

thanks

 

[dszady]

Can you recommend a free antivirus program to run on a small network (of
about 8x Win98 machines) at a not-for-profit organization? I will install it
on each machine if necessary.

I checked out pricelessware.org and the two programs that seem worth
considering are AVG & Avast! Can anyone with experience make a
recommendation?

posted on the 24hr help and av newsgroups too.

thanks

avast!. Why?
Auto updates. Inserts a line in outgoing and incoming e-mail headers
purporting it to be clean. Resources aren't bad.

 

[MightyKitten]

Then, I guess you will have to go with Avast, since installing AVG would be
'illegal'.

AVG is only freeware for a "single home user" (To bad if you have a summer
house ;-) )
You may only install it if you are a private user, and then only on a single
computer.

By the way, I this restriction is only a restriction by legal terms, not by
technical terms.

 

[colinco]

Inserts a line in outgoing and incoming e-mail headers

The only message in outgoing email should be "Get your own anti-virus"

 

[dszady]

Then, I guess you will have to go with Avast, since installing AVG would be
'illegal'.

AVG is only freeware for a "single home user" (To bad if you have a summer
house ;-) )
You may only install it if you are a private user, and then only on a single
computer.

By the way, I this restriction is only a restriction by legal terms, not by
technical terms.

From the avast! user page:
avast! 4 Home Edition could be used only by home users which do NOT use
their computer for profit. If you do not meet both conditions, you can
download avast! 4 Professional Edition, try it for up to 60 and then
purchase the valid license key.

 

[MightyKitten]

dszady wrote:

From the avast! user page:
avast! 4 Home Edition could be used only by home users which do NOT
use their computer for profit. If you do not meet both conditions,
you can download avast! 4 Professional Edition, try it for up to 60
and then purchase the valid license key.

Well, that will rule-out avast too, I suppose. Since I (almost) always
advice AVG to everyone, I dont know the L/A of avast, I just ruled out AVG,
and therefore (wrongly, I see) pointed to avast.

Free AV is also ruled out because of the L/A

To sad, but true

 

[Anonymous]

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dszady wrote:

To sad, but true

It may seem old-fashioned, but have you considered writing/emailing
to each of the free AV providers (or even some of the not for free)
advising that you're a cash-strapped not-for-profit organisation, and
requesting an exemption for placing their software on all of your
machines?

If you also hint that you are also considering the other AV software
providers, you may find that at least one of them will be very
helpful to a needy organisation (even if it just means placing a
simple note of what AV software you use on your website or at the
bottom of each email you send).

Having worked in customer service for over 20 years, I have found
that most companies are accommodating to requests from needy
organisations (especially when it is not really to cost them
anything).

 

[omega]

It may seem old-fashioned, but have you considered writing/emailing
to each of the free AV providers (or even some of the not for free)
advising that you're a cash-strapped not-for-profit organisation, and
requesting an exemption for placing their software on all of your
machines? [...]
Having worked in customer service for over 20 years, I have found
that most companies are accommodating to requests from needy
organisations (especially when it is not really to cost them
anything).

I've found the same thing. Not only does it not cost them, but I suspect
some of the corporations have appealing tax write-offs. One of the most
generous, btw, is Adobe. They like to provide all of their highend ($$)
products freely to non-profits. And further their licensing was (presume
still is) such that those involved with the non-profit (ie instructors,
and admins) are allowed to make a copy for home use.

 

[Mark S.]

Came across this today...

Clamav-Devel cvs for Windows 9x/NT/2k/XP
Port maintained by Brian Brubs <[email protected]>
http://www.sosdg.org/clamav-win32


What is Clamav?
Clamav is an open source antivirus program. While it may not have all of
the features of the big business antivirus software (like Norton
Antivirus), Clamav is fast and stable, and comes with none of the catches
like paid subscriptions for virus database updates.


Why port it to Windows?
I ported this to Windows one afternoon because I felt that someone out
there might be able to use it. I'm familiar with porting UNIX/Linux
applications to Windows (I maintain ircII EPIC4 For Windows as well).
This is not a 100% native port. I used the Cygwin layer to make Clamav
work correctly under Win32.


Does everything work correctly?
So far everything does - the initial tests show that clamd works, as well
as the scanning tools, freshclam, and sigtool. RAR support does not work
though.


Having problems with a missing TMP dir?

Make sure to set the env variable TMPDIR to a working temp directory that
does exist.

set TMPDIR=/cygdrive/c/clamav-devel/tmp

 

[David Simpson]

dszady wrote:


Well, that will rule-out avast too, I suppose. Since I (almost) always
advice AVG to everyone, I dont know the L/A of avast, I just ruled out AVG,
and therefore (wrongly, I see) pointed to avast.

Free AV is also ruled out because of the L/A

To sad, but true

As this is for a non-profit organisation you could e-mail the authors
and ask if you can use it. If they reply in the affirmative keep the
reply and go ahead.