By now you may have seen the press release and announcement about the purchase of CACE Technologies (my as-of-three-and-a-half-seconds-ago former employer) by Riverbed Technology (my new employer). In the announcement to the wireshark-users and wireshark-dev mailing lists I mentioned Riverbed’s commitment to the Wireshark community. I’d like to expand on that a bit.

Wireshark is more than a protocol analyzer. It is the foundation for relationships between several groups of people: the user community, the developer community, Wireshark University (driven by Laura Chappell), and CACE Technologies. Each one is an important part of Wireshark as a whole. We often referred to it as “the ecosystem” at CACE. It is an honor to be a part of it.

The important, wonderful, and rare thing about the ecosystem is that it benefits everyone involved. You can see this in action on Wireshark’s mailing lists, Laura’s seminars, and at SHARKFEST. It’s something that we worked hard to foster at CACE. What’s even better is that with Riverbed this commitment doesn’t change. Everyone I’ve talked to at Riverbed, from the CEO and CTO on down is committed to Wireshark and to its community. They realize we have a good thing going and they want to keep it that way.

On a personal level this has been an incredible journey so far. Every day I get to work with the amazing people on the Wireshark development team and at CACE. I also get to interact with the amazing people who make up the Wireshark community. For that I am grateful and I look forward to helping the ecosystem grow and evolve in the coming years.