Why is Comodo free?

Comodo has gained a reputation for putting out some pretty decent software, so why is it free?

Well that is the question troubling many people. Many people fear that its possible that Comodo have a backdoor in their software which could allow access.

 

Comodo claims to be the second largest SSL certification authority in the world (presumably after Verisign....), and on reading their website it appears the reason for their thinking is that its no good having SSL on a website, if the visitors computer is compromised. So in order to provide a whole trust solution they've taken to giving away free firewalls.

 

If you ask me it goes a lot deeper than that. Comodo wants to establish itself as a trusted company, the problem is that it doesn't have the history or financial status to warrant this. So instead its taken to building a loyal user base. There's nothing wrong with this, however I can imagine a day when they will want to monetize their firewall and other products, and then free users will be in trouble.