Is this what you refer to? I'm not sure it's an Agreement, but it was posted in his Firmware FAQ:

Well, that looks to be it.......But I do not see anywhere in this "agreement" that subscribers were not entitled to dissent in OTHER web forums...do you ?

ROFL.....second......read his very last line......now THERE'S a joke !

"Banning is an exceedingly rare occurence"

Evidentally not all THAT rare, eh ?

Totally agree with you on this. James and the folks at Sveasoft are crooks. Shame shame on you guys!!! Peeps should DOS on the Sveasoft website ;-)

~Peter

Ahem, I for one would not oppose those sorts of actions. Denial of Service attacks are for script kiddies.

As I said, this was a posted notice I found. It would be interesting to know what is considered as the agreement. Any recent subscribers, were you mailed a welcoming email or something outlining the Terms of Service agreement? When I click subscribe I go to a PayPal "Customer Subscribe" thingy and I'm not going further than that.

(Last edited by vincentfox on 24 Mar 2006, 02:15)

I think he's got some weasel room to do what he does, in just this sentence:

It doesn't seem to be conditional on any other term in the rest of the notice.

Ahhhh, but see....I did not post on HIS web site !

He simply describes methods to identify ME, not where I post !

If I do not "post" on his web site.......then I am not a "poster"...am I ?

Point well taken.  However, it's still not clear whether this item I found is your Terms of Service agreement. It'd be interesting to find out the experience of a recent subscriber.

Well, a word to the wise who use paypal to buy a sveasoft subscription:

James, i understand why paypal didn't refund the money. It's not because you prevailed with them, it's just because it wasn't a tangible item. That doesn't make you right. I paid for a years subscription service. I got two weeks because you couldn't stand a dissenting opinion to yours. (a polite dissenting opinion at that) I'd like my $20 bucks back please.

Interesting couple of posts.
I have dealt with James aka Sveasoft for a long time now (I was one of the first forum members there) and this is what I think about his posts here:

He is lying about subscribers getting the source code. The last source code release was in july 2005 and whenever somebody from the forum asked for source code in between, James promised that there will be a source code build system soon. I don't recall the exact date but it has been at least half a year ago that he first made that promise. Nothing has happened so far.
I know this because I have access to the forums and am in contact with many other (former) subscribers.

Even if the does release source code, I'm 99% sure that it won't be GPL-compliant. Its not hard to tell which parts will be closed if you know where his MAC protection sits. These parts include GPL code and I highly doubt he will release the source code to them.

The problem here is that we're not dealing with the average software developer here. It might be a personal issue but that guy has harassed me and others who tried to circumvent his "GPL lockdown" attemps many times. DCMA copyright violation notices, phone calls to my ISP claiming I was hacking his servers, emails to my email provider claiming I would be spamming his customers and so on. He'll go through great lengths to protect his faulty business idea.

If you honestly think he will EVER risk his business model by releasing "proper" source code then you don't know him well. We've had the exact same discussion many times now but nothing has changed. I wonder why he fails to realize that the easiest solution is to seperate the GUI (and other non-free parts) from the GPL stuff and sell only the added value (plus support).

I guess it's because there is almost no code in there that was written by Sveasoft from scratch. He once made a list with all "non-GPL" parts of his firmware as an explanation why subscribers musn't redistribute. Turns out that almost everything on that list is written under a free license (although not GPL) and could be legally redistributed without a problem. So if he released a proper source code, anybody could just replace the few scripts he wrote from scratch and make a fully legal redistribution (how about OpenSveasoft *g*).

In conclusion: It's not gonna happen. If it does happen, I'll be the first to release a clean source code archive without MAC protection so everyone can make their own GPL binaries without being harassed or limited by Sveasoft.

(Last edited by TheIndividual on 25 Mar 2006, 13:06)

New source tarball posted in the subscriber download sections:

http://www.sveasoft.com/modules/phpBB2/dlman.php?func=file_info&file_id=221

"Talisman-DevSnap-OWRT-GPL-Mar_22_2006.tar.bz2"

Appears to be the GPL portions only, haven't dug into the contents.

-brendan

Dunno....I get :

" Invalid File ID "

Looks like it's not REALLY there !

Could someone have a look at http://www.sveasoft.de/ (german) and tell me if i missed a project? Thanks.

Hmm, I downloaded a 38.3MB tgz archive via the download link on that page.

(Last edited by bhoar on 26 Mar 2006, 17:32)

You have to be logged into the site to be able to download the tarball. Otherwise, you get the unknown file ID error.

Of course, I requested the source and I do not have access to the forums...

The reality is even weaker than this. Dynamic linking (or any other activity) cannot magically cause software to become licensed under the GPL. The only way software ends up licensed under the GPL is if the author decides to license it.

What does happen is, if you write some code and link it to somebody else's code, you can't distribute the resulting work unless you have permission from the author of the code you linked to. In the case of GPL'ed code, the only way to get permission (apart from asking for a special case) is to license your own code under the GPL.

But, and this is important, it's always a choice. Simply linking your code with GPL code and distributing it does not magically put your code under any license - when challenged you can simply apologise for your license violation and cease distribution. The code owner could sue for damages, and might win cash, but it would be unlikely (IMHO IANAL) for the courts to force the violator to publish their own code because they'd violated the copyright in yours.

Thanks,
Cookie.

I'm not sure if anyone commented on this one, but you are wrong.
There is no need for him to provide the source to anyone he is not providing the binaries to, so it is  ok for him to provide the sources to subscribers only.

On the other hand, those subscribers are free to redistribute those sources as they see fit.

So, in a nutshell: He can distribute only to subscribers, but can't stop the redistribution under the GPL.

Actually, it is not as simple as that.
At least in 99% of the cases, for you to do dynamic linking you will need the header files from the library. By using those on your code, it automaticaly becomes GPL the moment you starts distributing it (another tricky point).

The usual solution adopted to this issue by closed source vendors is to make a tiny portion of their code, which links to the dynamic library, GPL, and have it comunicate with the other parts using IPC or something with the same effect.

Actually nbd is right on this.
The GPL gives you three options:

Since Sveasoft obviously isn't doing a) you could count their offer on the forums as b). c) is out of the question since its for noncommercial distribution only. And now read b) carefully: it says "to give any third party" in contrast to a) where only the "binary receiver" gets the sources.

Of course Sveasoft can opt to do a) but that doesn't apply to the many binaries they offered in the past and they are still offering today. Thus, anybody on this planet has a right to get that source code.

I hope that explains it well enough.

Remember that on b) you can already read: "acompany it". In that case, you are giving the written offer only to those receiving "it". In this case, the "binary" distribution.

As I said, he can't stop the distribution, but he doesn't have to make the offer (acompanning what?) to everyone.

This reminds me of theologians debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

The fine points of the GPL are irrelevant,  given the apparent hostility of James towards the very spirit of the thing.

The more likely approach than attempting to grok the GPL in full, is to just slap something together and shove it out the door. And hope that'll be good for another year so he can keep fleecing his customers.

sveasoft, prepare your lawyers and money, you will be invited soon to long battle.
Question is not "and specify the binary you want source to". It is clearly written in GPL:

It is not a market, to buy time and drop a price, it is legal document. If you are not a thief (sure only court can say that, and we will see it in few weeks, we are analysing all information and preparing papers), you have to understand, that license is not amusement. Remember, some people doing bad things, and later crying in jail, when they understands what they did, and what is the cost of mistakes.

While I agree with your sentiment, it's largely wasted effort and empty threats that have been covered earlier in this thread. Do you have money and live in Sweden to press lawsuit directly? Or to fund someone who does? If not, it's just cartoony threats. As far as I'm aware there haven't been any big GPL cases to date pressed from the GPL-side, and certainly no one has done any jail-time for it.  There have been suits from the non-GPL side which have failed is all that springs to mind. In Wallace vs. FSF, Wallace had to pay court costs, which included only court fees not the lawyer fees for defense.

It seems to be getting some pretty good tests in Germany.  If you haven't read through the news posts on http://www.gpl-violations.org, you definately should. 

Harald Welte has made some great impact on some pretty big companies for violating the GPL.  About the furthest it has had to go is an injuction issued against Fortinet.  That injuction was held up in the courts and Fortinet gave in. 

I'd love to see someone spear-head something like gpl-violations.org in the USA.  Start hitting companies in a really big market and they will start to think twice before they thumb their nose at the GPL and infringe on others copyrights.   

FSF seem to be much more passive that gpl-violations.  I don't know way.  Funding maybe?

Perhaps you could submit the relevant information to these folks at GPL-violations.org.  I couldn't even find a Search function on the site to see if SveaSoft has already been mentioned.