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Ok I admit it, I have been lazy recently. Not much had happened in the WRT scene in a while.
OpenWRT now has a great Web-Interface, DD-WRT got better on a daily basis while Sveasofts lost all its developers except James and the quality of their firmware releases declined even more.

However there finally was a somewhat working "dev build" recently that I and others took a look at. It became obvious that Sveasoft had switched to a new kernel and it turns out that kernel is a direct copy from OpenWRT.

Sveasoft had been using OpenWRT parts in the past but now they are basically using it as the foundation for their rip-off scheme. As always they have not released the corresponding source code to the subscribers, not even on request.

In reaction to this obvious GPL violation, OpenWRT posted this NOTICE OF LICENSE TERMINATION. Basically this means that Sveasoft has no right to use any parts of OpenWRT in their firmwares anymore.

There is a discussion going on about this on the OpenWRT forums as well as on digg.com.
Feel free to join it and make sure to notify your favourite news sites about this issue. Sveasoft has been violating the GPL for a long time now but they have gone one step too far this time.

The new version of Freeman (1.04) is now available for download!

Last time Sveasoft apparently had unintentionally released an unprotected binary on which Freeman 1.02 was based. This time Sveasoft didn't make the same mistake, the MAC protection had to be hacked and removed.
Kudos to the people responsible for that!

Most 1.02 bugs should be fixed in this one, you'll find the changelog here.
It still doesn't support WRT54Gv1.x and there's still no Talisman source code available to subscribers.

Now enjoy the firmware and please share it on eDonkey or other P2P networks!

Current mirrors (thx to all supporters):
http://wrt54g.serwer.net
http://wrt54g.cybermart.ca/
http://wrt54g.lam3rz.info/
http://wrt54g.fancios.net:9080/
http://wrt54g.thermoman.de
http://eng.utoledo.edu/~sharlow/wrt54g/
http://wrt54g.sanderkerkhoff.com/
http://fastmirror.take13.net/wrt54g/
http://indi.doubledaze.com/

Forum:
http://forum.bsr-clan.de/viewforum.php?f=12

It was bound to happen. After pissing of the entire open source community with their scam, it was only a matter of time until Sveasoft's latest baby - Talisman - would be hacked and made public.

An anonymous fan supplied me the file, apparently it has been released on eDonkey (P2P network) simultaniously.
I do not know who those guys are but they certainly did a good job. They removed the 5-MAC-limit and made some funny "tweaks" to the web-GUI.
Also they were nice enough to include a link to my journal and the forum.

I guess I must have found some new allies, let's hope they keep this stuff coming. Sveasoft claims they will release Talisman source code soon, I'll add it as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Please share the file with others via your favorite P2P network.

Enjoy Talisman - over and out.

Quick update:
Sveasoft is already spreading FUD about the firmware breaking routers. This is a lie, my source told me the code is identical and my tests verified that everything works just fine.

Sorry for not updating this journal in a while. On April 21st, Sveasoft decided to drop work on Alchemy and release it to the public as it is. It is called final and it should be somewhat stable.

Also, after not releasing any source code to the subscribers for 5 months, they finally made the Alchemy sources available.

Both files will appear on the mirrors shortly.

Development at Sveasoft now focuses on Talsiman, the new firmware. As I previously reported, they added an activation system to their download manager.
A subscriber now has to enter the MAC adresses of the devices he/she wants to install the firmware on (up to five). It was also suggested, that the specialised versions of Talisman (VPN, Mesh, Voip) will cost per unit.
Obviously this implies that there will be no more full source code releases in the future, giving subscribers no option to compile their own limitation free firmware.

It is sad that it came to this and even more sad, that Sveasoft blames me for this. They always stated that the 20$ charge is only for support and forum access, not for the firmware. By this logic, releasing the firmware shouldn't do any damage to them since my releases don't give you access to the paid service.
Turns out Sveasoft lied to their subscribers once again, 20$ is now for 5 units (per WRT version) and installing the firmware on a router you don't own is not allowed anymore.

Hello everybody,
thanks to two fellow suppliers I had the chance to make a tag-free version of Alchemy pre7a. You may notice the name change, apparently Sveasoft decided that having seven release candidates durin a feature freeze is a little embarassing.

This version, as always, has been tested before release. Please read the included text files for further information, post questions or comments in this forum thread

Another thing worth mentioning: Sveasoft hasn't released any source code since last christmas (rc5a). I assume this is due to the great and truely free Alchemy fork DD-WRT. Sveasoft declared they don't want them to make a build based on their buggy pre-release code.
I wonder why they release buggy firmware in the first place if they don't want their beta code to be used...