One of the notable features of open source software is forking. If an open source project takes a direction that users or developers don't like, well, they can fork off in a new direction.

In these cases, developers of open source licensed code can fork a project and create a new application that takes a different path than the original code. That's what happened with the Nessus vulnerability scanner in 2005 which led to the OpenVAS (Open Vulnerability Assessment System) project.

OpenVAS is now out with its 2.0 release, which still shows some of its Nessus roots but isn't focused on keeping up with what's happening on the main Nessus effort. The Nessus fork is now carving out its own niche and moving out of the shadow of its creation.

"You will still be able to see the origins of OpenVAS," OpenVAS developer Jan-Oliver Wagner told InternetNews.com. "However, many parts are not compatible anymore and only few patches to OpenVAS might still apply to Nessus 2.x. The OpenVAS developers have not started to rewrite major parts of the code. It was rather about removing redundant code paths and other cleanups as well as new features."