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I havn't heard of any other ISP having this problem


Actually I think that many ISPs had the same problem, even my home wireless router have a similar problem with vist (DHCP don't work) I noticed it when a friend with a new vista laptop visited me (look at the FAQ page of the producer!). This proves the huge and bad effect that microsoft has in the IT world: they are so powerful and scary that everyone else prefer to silently workaround MS, if they don't they fear to loose lots of customers. So microsoft is sucking a lot of work time from everybody else to interoperate with their buggy software. If you add this fact to the annoying difficulty of having embedded window reimboursed you can easily understand why the open source community is often so hyper critical toward the dominant-position abuser.

Several have settled at the threat of suit.. but who has actually gone and lost ( or won ).
Well...
BERLIN, Germany - Apr. 14, 2004 -- The Munich district court granted a preliminary injuction against Sitecom Germany GmbH (http://www.sitecom.com/). This injunctive relieve has been applied by the netfilter/iptables project (http://www.netfilter.org/).
-- full story http://netfilter.org/news/2004-04-15-sitecom-gpl.h tml
It's a german court, but still...

A lot of similar devices popped up in recent months. And I really mean a lot. Maybe not all of them are powered by AA batteries, some have Li-Ion rechargable battery, some have bundled power adapter. I did a bit of research on this some time ago, here's list of already available devices (as opposed to the one from story, which will be available in mid Jan only):

http://www.macally.com/new/new_syncbox.html, review of this product.
http://www.macally.com/spec/usb/input_device/table ts.html - "coming soon"
http://www.delkin.com/pdf/product_docs/usb_bridge. pdf
http://www.usbgear.com/USBG-OTG25.html
http://www.sarotech.com/cgi/main_eng.cgi?cmd=cutie dx_e
http://www.welland.com.tw/html/otg.html
http://www.welland.com.tw/html/otg/940otg.html
http://www.sitecom.com/index.php?prod_id=308&grp_i d=1
http://www.usbgear.com/USBG-OTG1.html
http://itsupplier.trustpass.alibaba.com/offerdetai l/12276816/Sell_font_color_red_Otg_font_Enclosure. html
http://www.globalsources.com/si/6007000637244/Prod uctDetail/Flash-MP3/product_id-1000452775/action-G etProduct.htm

Make your pick. But remember that some USB devices (like flash drives) are powered through USB port directly, so USB On-the-go host is supposed to provide power both for embedded hard drive and whatever you attach to it. Think about it when buying device powered by AA batteries - they may be not enough for some power-hungry USB appliances, microdrive-based "flash" drives are coming to mind here.

The thing looks like crap, regardless of how well it works. It looks like a science experiment kit straight out of a '60s Radio Shack catalog. All that's missing is a picture of kids and a mom on the box front.

Just in case somebody is wondering what company this injunction was targeting: According to heise it is Sitecom.

An immediate consequence of this judgment will be that Sitecome will not be able to market their offending router products in Germany unless they start complying to the GPL. There is an interesting twist to this case. The company that has been sued in Germany is named on Sitecome's website as distributor for Germany - they also happen to be a wholly owned subsidiary. They argued that since they do not produce but only sell and support the products that the issue should be brought up with there parent company and that they are in essence not responsible for sitecome.com's actions. This argument was dismissed by the court because they were the only one's listed for Germany on the website. This brings up the interesting questions would this judgment also apply to independent distributors of Sitecome's product who happen to be listed on their site? The way this judgment is worded I tend to believe the answer is yes - alas I am not a lawyer.

This hasn't gone to a trial, and it doesn't look like it will. Sitecom almost immediately added a download that appears to bring them into compliance with the GPL to their Drivers and Manuals Page. Of course we'll have to wait for the copyright holders to look it over and decide whether it's legit or not before we can be certain...

http://www.sitecom.com/driversmanuals.php?grp_id=6 &prod_id=237&search=1

It's not clear if this is the original unmodified code, or if it truely corresponds to what they are shipping. It's also not apparant when this was added to their site... maybe have been in response to the injunction.

If anyone from sitecom is reading this, your website's fancy navigation system makes it almost impossible to copy-n-paste a URL to refer someone to a specific page on your site. Also, the search does not work in Mozilla/linux with the Sun JRE. Why not just use standard links and entry boxes?

I just went to their site, and under the support link for the infringing product, they had this under the downloads section:

WL-122 Wireless Broadband router 100g+
Firmware Source code GPL
Note that these downloads are completely unnecessary unless you plan to do programming to alter the code.

Did they just add this? or was there more to it than just having source available?