[dejv]

As another Czech person and former PM of another security product I guess there are two main factors in play:

1. Tech factor: amount of HW and SW what could be exported into Eastern bloc was very limited so people who worked with computers were all very confortable with low level work as getting anything else than bare computer was almost impossible.

2. Business factor: there was close to 0 money available in Easter bloc (= 40 years of comunism destroyed all personal equity as all property from previous generation was confiscated and your earning potential was very limited) so when you started software company you needed sales channel that didn't require much hand holding. Antiviruses are great because you could use listings on download sites and the product is culture agnostic.

In US your best bet in 90s was to create consumer or enterprise SW company. But imagine being in Czech republic: you don't understand the US culture to get into home of people and you don't have access to capital and institutional knowledge to build enterprise SW (no way you was going to afford opening US office on money availale in this region). But hey, no problem writing AV software, then upload it to download.com and then collect payments.

Also those AV companies took so long to take off: Avast was created in late 80s and it took them around 15 years to get any traction. Being in region with more opportunities you probably give up and try something else.