Truthfully, the sveasoft software has gone nowhere in the last year or so.  I was a subscriber from the beginning (it was actually a pretty cool project two years ago), but all this recent bullshit just gives me a great reason to let my subscription lapse.

To answer your question, the only thing that Talisman has over other firmwares is that it is far more pretentious.  While it is slated to have some cool features someday (wireless VLANS, multiple SSIDs), it is coming at the expense of basic things (PPPoE, QoS, SNMP) that should have been fixed months/years ago.  While some of these advances are pretty neat, just about every other firmware distribution on the planet has at least decided to make sure all the basic things are working pretty solidly before feeling the need to experiment.  Personally, I've recently moved to DD-WRT from Talisman 1.1 because there are only a few functions that I want my router to do (route, SNMP, QoS), and sveasoft has left two out of three of those broken since October.

(As a side note "DD-WRT" is censored on the sveasoft BBS.  Any mention is replaced by "an Alchemy fork")

(Last edited by tamerlane on 15 Mar 2006, 01:51)

It sounds like a reasonable idea. mbm/nbd did you try to contact them for consultations? That's why such organizations are here for.

Priceless!

You will at least use your current subscription to the end (or free-willingly not use it). I cannot do that with mine. After I replied to sveasoft with "why not" talking about message that appeared here about licence being revoked my message got deleted. After someone else protested because his message wanished I said that I don't believe that someone did that intentionaly, that there must be a forum database failure. And that was my last chance to say anything because within hours I have been banned from the forum and now can only see "Your access to Sveasoft has been revoked.Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information."

Of course that I have contacted support@sveasoft.com but no one replied.

I guess my polite message was one message to many for them but I just can't justify that kind of behaviour. After all, i am (or better say - I was) a paying customer. Hey sveasoft, I want my money back. (Just kidding. Going the direction you have chosen to go no money on the earth can help you. Maybe, just maybe, if you donate all that money you took from us, to the charity...)

You didn't give me "premium" support as promised and clearily stated on the web page e.g. waited 3 weeks just to get 1 MAC address cleared from the 5 MACs available list, is that a premium support? , and MAC limit was not even mentioned when I payed the subscription, most of your answers when I (and others) encountered a problem was - it works for me (TM), you gave me no source so I could not deal with many bugs I encountered, by myself, .... I wonder why did you even bother to thank me once for a workaround of one of your numerous bugs .... hey wait, I know, it must have been message from one of your ex coworkers ....

Too bad I wasted two years going in wrong direction. Mea culpa. I can see clearly, now. I just hope it is not too late. :-)

I would request very definitely that you get your subscription money refunded. He refunded mine when I was banned, I don't know why anyone would let James keep their $20 after they have been kicked out.  You didn't buy software after all, you bought a year's membership to the forums is how I believe he sells it. Therefore if you haven't gotten your years worth you deserve a refund.

But, but, but, but... you can see a picture of Fiji!  That'll be $20, please.

Interesting message from "Sveasoft administrator" in their forums in response to a request for source code:

http://www.sveasoft.com/modules/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14415

Translation:  Making a tarball of your code is REALLY hard. Not just anyone can do something like that.  It takes a lot of brainpower that I would not then have available for policing my forums and other websites, banning users, and scaring off all my developers.

More likely James  doesn't want to hand out source, because then someone will strip out the MAC-locking junk and he could *potentially* have another "pirate" version of his firmware floating around.  He is deathly afraid of that.

I'm not sure the GPL makes any distinction for "legit" requests for the source. Who decides that? He does. I doubt very many requests will be fulfilled. He hasn't had time for this since JULY 2005.

Righto then!

(Last edited by vincentfox on 16 Mar 2006, 04:34)

He doesn't release source code because he wants to tag & protect it.
I'm guessing that if he ever releases a source tar he'll leave a vital part closed source and tagged per subscriber if he ever releases buildable source code at all. He's doing the same for the binaries, every subscriber gets a unique mac-locked firmware so he can easily tell if who is the leak.

This guy is so obsessed with his copy protection, I really doubt he will recover if someone hacks his precious firmware again. Let's see if anybody on this planet will actually see the promised source code but I highly doubt it.

well, my request for clarification on what constitues a legit request resulted in a reply of "request that is non-GPL harrassment is legit" but then this private message:

(Last edited by Ephraim on 16 Mar 2006, 14:52)

How much business do you guys think he does? Is there a total forum members display at Sveasoft? I understand how he could be making so much money, when I heard of the WRT I only heard of Sveasoft. I learned about everybody else after a long while of looking into it. I think a lot of people go straight to Sveasoft and don't mind paying the 20$ because  they don't know they can get something like HyperWRT for nothing. I think the best thing to do is promote you firmwares more (although less so for OpenWRT because it's not a good introduction to it) and then he'll have fewer bites.

Well next time you log onto the forums at SveaSoft, there's a number for registered subscribers. I don't know whether that number is active paying accounts or not, but last time I looked at it a year ago, multiplying it by $20 made him a millionaire.  However this is hardly a concern to me. I don't mind greed.  I do mind a lot what he is doing with hiding his source, after having willingly based it on GPL.   Yes his customer service and support skills are on a scale of 1 to 10..... about a -5.  As you've witnessed, he has a stunningly keen interest for searching other websites, remembering usernames of his subscribers and cross-referencing those against any possibly negative comments made about him. Unless you have consistently a brown-nose on all his searching, you are in the long list of suspected enemy agents.  I'm guessing his list of trusted friends and fools is pretty short these days.

(Last edited by vincentfox on 16 Mar 2006, 18:35)

Yes, but I don't have access to that forum anymore so I can't tell you new numbers.
Don't mix total number of forum users with total number of subscribers! Use just list of subscribers!
I posted my calculation a long time ago - it appeared that small company (5-10 people) in developing country would live really comfortable life with that income. I would join their team full-time for half that money (per person) but it wasn't enough for sveasoft so they often pointed out that it is a "part-time" or "spare-time" job for (at least some of) them...

I am still willing to pay similar ammount of money, but unfortunately, there are so many different versions of third-party firmware I can't decide which one to choose. Too bad that developers from those projects can't cooperate and merge those variations into one (or two) firmware versions. I still think it is possible. Imagine a web page with lot's of questions like "what hardware do you have" "do you need pppoe" "do you need vpn" "do you need ipv6" and so on ... and when you finish - voila - there is firmware customized just for you. Both source and binary, of course :-) Don't tell me it is impossible I know what I am talking about (working with computers since IMSAI 8080 - entering program code with switches and later with punched tapes - those were the days :-) )
Now, you pay 20$ and you have no rights , they ban you from forum,download,support, say "what would you like for 20$", ...

LinksysInfo has a firmware comparison page that will clear up that mystery for ya.

http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=31

Perhaps more other sites should link to that? It could use an update though. Doesn't even have OpenWRT in it. But then again for 90+% of people OpenWRT is perhaps not a good starter firmware. Lots of good stuff at LinksyInfo if you want to skim the whole community. James and Toxic do a great job.

(Last edited by vincentfox on 16 Mar 2006, 18:43)

I would think that should be trivial to strip out.  Not that I care to do it because IMO his firmware is crap to begin with.

A tool to permit others to strip out the MAC lock would also be entirely legal, ethical and moral since he doesn't have a valid distribution license in the first place.  You could argue that an unlocked jimmyware is more legitimate than the locked versions he distributes.

That, would be a hypothetical ethical discussion.  Since, not having any source code it's pointless to speculate on what you might or might not do with it.

News from the front lines:

Looks like it may happen sooner rather than later (or never)...

(Last edited by tamerlane on 16 Mar 2006, 22:43)

I wonder what changed his mind? Seems at odds with previous pronouncements.

It could be that he actually gives a damn about the GPL, or maybe he's just tired of the bad press and members asking for code.  Still, I'm willing to bet that the only reason there hasn't been a source release in like the eight months or so was just due to a combination of laziness and over-protectiveness.

That being said, I still find it odd too.  Earlier today, in defining what a legit source request was, james responded "Legit request = non-GPL harangue."  Less than 12 hours ago, anyone asking for the source because of the GPL or "because I want to build it myself" was basically given the cold shoulder.

That would be at odds with:

This was the beginning of a harangue by James about the evils of GPL. I notice the forum posting that originally contained his observations of how the GPL was going to bring about the fall of Western civilization, has since been edited and that section removed.  Current version is much shorter and more Politically Correct:

http://www.sveasoft.com/modules/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16015

Too bad I didn't quote the whole thing it was richly entertaining and instructive insight.  Obviously he thought better of being so public with his views. But he hasn't retracted them so I doubt his views have changed one bit.  If you think he's doing this for any other reason than mollifying people so he can buy time to squeeze some more money out of his business, you are kidding yourself.

I don't know why he makes it sound like it's so very hard to provide source. As a former rocket scientist, I feel qualified to say, this isn't rocket science.  Thousands of groups have their SVN or other source code repositories open and they aren't even working with his kind of steady income.

(Last edited by vincentfox on 17 Mar 2006, 01:49)

I overlooked the LinksysInfo story has the earlier version. So now you'll know how he feels about the GPL:

From the editorial here:
http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.php? … mp;thold=0

(Last edited by vincentfox on 17 Mar 2006, 01:54)

Yeah, when I first saw that quote, I somehow got the impression that the legal decision he's looking for is that the GPL should be found unenforceable and invalid...

Yep.

James is unable to reconcile that he willingly chose GPL-based code, so he'd rather it just "went away" so it would stop annoying him.  Rather like users. James likes them best when they give him money, take what he gives them, and don't complain about anything. If you complain you must be a Commie.

Anyhow, I believe the original point was the possibility that he is continuing to rip off the work of GPL projects and include it in his firmware.   If true, just handing out source might be out of the frying pan and into the fire. Likely he'll have plenty of opportunity during this time to cover his tracks, removing or replacing the allegedly offending code.

Well, if he has no code of interest to anyone, why would you be bothered that he doesn't share the code? It appears as if there could be no other reason aside from the fact that he is getting mucho attention and money gained through the GPL under sketchy ways. Otherwise if he was giving a distro of WRT for free with no source (an d therefore no profit) why would everyone be so pissed off? He'd be in the periphery and no one would care. If you're saying he's made millions from it then I think it should be a part of the concern, a main one.

I think it'd be well to just try and publicise one of the more simple distros (I'd say HyperWRT) so that people won't think there's just Sveasoft.

No.  I can't speak for Vincent but the fact t that someone is bltantly violating the GPL offends many people and it matters not that there is money involved.

That question makes no sense.

No.  Regardless of whether someone charges for it or not if they distribute binary code under the GPL they must make the corresponding source code available.  It's part and parcel of the license and if someone doesn't like it then they don't have to use the code.  Continued distribution without a valid license becomes a copyright violation.

Be my guest.  The fact remains there are people and organizations out there, not just Sveasoft, that freely take code made available to them under the GPL and then turn around and thumb their noses at the authors' wishes and license terms.  There are words for people like that, among them "despicable" and "thief".

(Last edited by Craven on 17 Mar 2006, 05:31)

Yep, quite a number of people have an axe to grind with James Ewings.  Reasons vary, some petty, some not so petty.   Personally I watched the guy turn a fun little firmware project into an increasingly intolerant place. It seemed like as success mounted, his "Captain Queeg" character manifested itself more and more. What was once fun became more and more about control over the code. Code that he had not originated mind you, so control over it seemed a slippery problem.  How do you claim control over territory that is not your own to start with?  His solution for it was to sell himself as a service organization.  But his customer service skillset is quite poor.  And the only other solution in his toolbox which is control of the code is increasingly what he turns to.

I don't think anyone would notice his diminishing project at this point, all the other projects that grew up afterward have surpassed it and accelerating.  Do you think James Ewings inspires developers to contribute to his project? No he scares them all off.  No the big problem is he's grasping at anything and like a drowning man he's not too particular about what he does to stay alive.  It's all kinda sad really.  If he weren't such a big butthead about the whole thing I'd feel sorry for him.  Most people would apologize if they done wrong, or try to find some way to make amends and make things right. That's also good business I think. But he doesn't do that.

(Last edited by vincentfox on 17 Mar 2006, 06:42)