<rant>
So I wanted to post to the community about the dangers of antivirus listing any software developers application in this signature database. We have recently found that a specific antivirus detects/flags a common driver used across many different apps. These antivirus *companies* tout their application to the novice users who will download anything as their savior but will list legitimate applications and/or drivers. For a free software program this can be a big deal because of the retention rates will start to decline. Fortunately we have found a work around to pass this antivirus and learned about many other authors having to remove false positives. But wait, isn't Adware baaaaad? No, this is like saying the constant battle between ad blockers and website owners isn't drawing parallels. More and more users are installing "software" that blocks ads from the ad networks that make up affiliate marketing. Both publisher and advertisers. What happens if this trend keeps going this way? Adapt or die right? Think just a couple of browsers on the market is still great? What happens when the millions of chrome and firefox users are suddenly forced into only using approved stores to download/install anything?
This reminds me of the days with spamhaus fighting the mailers and saying "we are an optional service the isp's use". I surely hope that in 5-10 years we are not facing a walled garden approach to software like having a smart phone and only having a couple of stores that allows us to install something on our computer unless we "hack" our OS.
</rant>