TheIndividual's Journal: Tag-free Sveasoft Alchemy pre7a

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...

GPL violation

[Paul Jakma]

Hi,

I'm one of the maintainers of and a minority copyright holder in
Quagga [quagga.net], which appears to be included in the 6.04rc4a source [ftp.gwdg.de].

Can anyone tell me whether the images distributed by Sveasoft, allegedly in violation of the GPL, include Quagga? I tried downloading a binary image from your site, but it appears to be compressed, so I couldnt go hunting for strings - would anyone have a copy of the Sveasoft in uncompressed form (packed together as an fs would do) so I can hunt for tell tale strings? Alternative

Re:GPL violation

[TheIndividual]

Quagga is included. I checked by running "ripd --help" which identifies as your ripd (just like ospfd and others). To get the squashfs part of the binary, split it before the "hsqs". Everything from that point on (including "hsqs") can be mounted with a "mount -o loop -t squashfs filesystem.sqsh /mnt/sveasoft/". If you want I can provide you with a tarball of all files but if you have a squashfs-aware kernel the above method is faster and better.

Re:GPL violation

[Paul Jakma]

What does it say? Did it say "Report bugs to http://bugzilla.quagga.net"?

Re:GPL violation

[Paul Jakma]

Ok, received your email, downloaded the tarball of the fs and the binaries most definitely are Quagga. Though they are stripped, the ELF header has references to several functions I hold copyright in.

I will email you.

Is it bad

[Tensor]

if i am LOVING the turn in this conversation ?

Re:GPL violation

[Paul Jakma]

FWIW,

After extensive investigation, including having spoken to someone I know reasonably well who is Sveasoft subscriber, I have concluded there is no GPL licencing problem with the Sveasoft firmware (at least in so far as Quagga is concerned).

Paul Jakma.

Hello.

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

I am very interested in your activity, but your forum seems to be down at the moment.

Re:Hello.

[TheIndividual]

Be patient, I believe the server is down at night sometimes for maintenance. We're just guests there but so far there have been no problems with hosting...

Re:Hello.

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

I signed up for their product before I knew any better and I can supply their prerelease stuff if you want.

If you have AIM, drop me a line at Lyph3.

Thanks

[sp00]

Thanks again for your hard work.

Change in policy

[cdrudge]

As to why source code If may also have to do with their posted potential change in policy posted on Jan 19th:

Due to the strict interpretation of the GPL taken by some folks we may be making a public move to declare the Sveasoft firmware development project a closed, internal company beta.

This would be a shame and is against our belief in the beta/public development model but may be necessary due to "GPL politics", which is apparently an all or nothing game.

The result would be that no source code of any k