TheIndividual's Journal: Alchemy 1.0 released to the public

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.

Re:gpl-violations.org

[OverlordQ]

On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 03:46:41PM -0500, OverlordQ wrote:

>> I'm sure you've been emailed about them before but I was curious as to if any
>> action could be taken against Sveasoft for their GPL violations.

i receive multiple emails about them every day. Up to this point, I
can not proove that there is a copyright violation going on.

-- - Harald Welte http://gpl-violations.org/ [gpl-violations.org]
===================
"Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option." (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)

Thanks

[Tensor]

As always, your efforts are very much appreciated.

I regret having payed originally for this, despite that i am now banned from the sveasoft forums.

Re:MAC

[TheIndividual]

The firmware checks locally for the devices MAC adress. If it doesn't match, it prevents NVRAM access. Even if you would fake a router to have a given MAC, you couldn't use two such devices on the same network. No WDS, no bridgin and so on. But I'm sure there will be a solution eventually ;)