Slashdot Mirror
CherryOS Not All It's Cracked Up To Be
CherryBS continues "PearPC developers who have seen CherryOS have confirmed it is a fraud, while others remaining anonymous have posted the 'strings' output that CherryOS and PearPC share, showing many function names, warning/informational message strings that exist verbatim in PearPC. Additionally, now-pulled screenshots of CherryOS, mirrored in the long thread at pearpc.net, show CherryOS's boot process revealing variable names and missing or incorrectly emulated hardware in such a way as to be specific to PearPC. Arben Kryeziu, the developer of CherryOS, claims that no code has been taken from PearPC whatsoever, and that he will release a trial version this week. However, with the amount of deception on the part of the company, and considering this wouldn't be the first time he's violated the GPL, it's hard to believe they're telling the truth. Additionally, Kryeziu now claims the "trial" may "disable modules like sound or drag and drop"...likely because PearPC itself does not support such features. To further add to the tale, someone who was likely Arben was specifically asking for video server load testing for their vx30.com video codec/server product, even specifically mentioning slashdot as a great candidate, and in the days following the CherryOS story unfolding, went back and deleted the posts. The first day, all that was left online were two videos, one of which was subsequently removed because of PearPC-specific strings in the boot process shown in the video..."
The other day, when I first saw mention of 'CherryOS', the first thing that came to mind was "I bet they're using PearPC code without attribution.". A full-featured PPC emulator (an incredibly difificult accomplishment) coming out so soon after another?
Glad to see that my fears were vindicated. DIE, HOARDER SCUM.
...popped the cherry!
Did anyone think it would be anything differnt? This reminds me of whenever some new console comes out, there is always some miricle emulator coming out soon that will play every game for it perfectly.
Something's a little rotten w/that Cherry? That's the pits!!!
read the mirrored thread. it's well worth the time to examine it.
Let's check the facts here - this guy claims to have written a mac emulator that runs at 80% native speed, all by himself... in 4 months?!! He's either a frickin' genius, or he's "embraced" some code from somewhere - and I think we all know where...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Glad i didn't take this guy up on his bet.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
while IANAL, is this necessarily illegal?? if he makes the source code for pearpc downloadable/packaged with with cherry and acknowlodges somewhere in the eula that its pearpc rebranded than while he has morally been an asshole he hasnt violated the gpl, has he?
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
You know, it's one thing for a corporate guy to think that he can get away with this. It's quite another for an open source developer to pilfer and another open source developer's code, release his "modifications" online and claim it's his. The CherryOS guy(s) better watch out, they may find themselves next in line for a darwin award for being that stupid.
I mean seriously... this is about as bright as murdering your neighbor in your front lawn in the middle of the day and stretching their corpse out on a lawn chair in your yard while you cut the grass...
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
popped
The first day, all that was left online were two videos, one of which was subsequently removed because of PearPC-specific strings in the boot process shown in the video..."
Heh. If they can't even cover their tracks THIS BAD, no wonder they got catched (which is a good thing).
Now I wonder... are all GPL violators this clumsy? Probably not... you know the saying, for every thief you catch, hundreds still run free.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
Sebastian Ballas, PearPC's lead developer, said a screenshot of CherryOS shows a variable named "SPIRO MULTIMAX 3000," a nonsensical term Ballas claims to have invented for use in PearPC.
"It is absolutely unlikely that someone uses exactly this name for the same purpose," he said. "The way he (Kryeziu) is lying is making me angry."
When told that variables with the same names had been found in both CherryOS and PearPC, Kryeziu said programming logic often leads to variables and functions with similar, or identical, names.
"There are some functionalities that can only be done a certain way," he said. "Names are going to be similar or identical because there are only certain ways to do things."
BUAHAHHAHAAHHAHHAHA
Seems like the slashdotters in this thread figured this out first.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
It's not theft, it's copyright infringement! At least, that's what we say about music and movies ... why should the party line be any different for GPLed code?
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Why would anyone annouce this without having the product? I'm not saying that they do or don't have a product, I'm just completely blown away when people announce products that don't exist and expect to somehow profit from them.
to the ripoff were so overwhelming, that its amazing they managed to scam so many news organizations. From almost identical function key hints in the title bar, to similar boot strings to the ridiculous idea of someone "getting tired of carrying two laptops" and writing CherryOS as a work-around, can anyone, really, truly be surprised?
if they removed any of the copyright information from the souce code files, and if they don't release the source code or make it available to the public, then they are in violation of the GPL.
.... THE GPL USES COPYRIGHT, IT DOES NOT IGNORE COPYRIGHT.
you're incorrect about naming provisions... GPL is a license, and to use copyrighted GPL code, you need to attribute the copyright holder. You may distribute/use/modify, etc... however, the original code must still be attributed to the copyright holder.
Once again -
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
From TFSummary:
CherryBS continues
he may lose his Cherry - say, in prison?
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Allegations are surfacing that "Windows 2000" which runs at 80% the speed of Windows NT on the X86 platform, is in fact not built on top of an X86 emulator and runs directly on the hardware.
Unknown host pong.
Um, the CherryOS folks were selling it as a proprietary software. No source, not free as beer.. Wouldn't that be wrong, assuming that its origin was PearPC?
I did an article on my jackwhispers website about this.
I was one of the first to point this out and MANY of the PearPC forums respondents replied to me in email and told me about all the links within this article. (One of them is quite startling - about Arben having downloaded PearPC)
There are a few other insights at the link above.
Sorry to whore my own site, but I almost think it should be linked here too because I added a little political UNcorrectness to the mix.
Why the Cherry or The Pear May Be Apple's Next Lemon
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I like this quote:
"If it isn't, it will ruin my reputation," he said. "I will end up as a bartender. I do not want to be a bartender."
Can I get mine shaken, not stirred?
Well, if the response to the initial accusations had been "Yup, you're right, it's based off of PearPC and we're going to release our code right away", no one would care (for example, see the TransGaming work with WINE... a slightly different, though similar situation (different because the TransGaming code base is from the MIT-licensed version of WINE)). However, they've repeatedly denied that their code is based off of PearPC, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, making it pretty obvious that they don't plan to comply with the GPL (assuming they release anything in the first place).
for(long SPIRO_MULTIMAX_3000 = 0; SPIRO_MULTIMAX_3000 < 256; i++) {
- ...
}C'mon now, doesn't everybody?
from the no-shit-sherlock dept.
Yeah, yeah, I post-incremented "i"...I guess it shows you how hard it is to even fake using that stupid variable name. :-)
From now on every piece of code I write is going to have a variable named SPIRO MULTIMAX 3000!
All,
To see the update from October 16th, click here.
To see the update from October 17th, click here.
I did a little investigating on CherryOS and I made several startling discoveries beyond its amazing similarity to PearPC. First, the individual who first posted on [H]ard|Forum about being given a "beta" test of CherryOS (that is, Dag33k), is in fact the same person as the alleged author of CherryOS, Arben Kryeziu. Interestingly, on HardForum Dag33k posted a link to the developer's response (alias: ArbenK) on the PearPC form. I have pretty sufficient evidence to suggest that these two people are one in the same. Look at the registration dates for Dag33k's account and Sourceforge's account for ArbenK. Coincidence?
HardForum's user information:
Sourceforge's user information:
Both dates, of course, are 2003-05-05.
Things get even more interesting, when we trap Arben Kryeziu in another lie. On the PearPC forum, he claims he doesn't speak any Albanian, as we see here:
But then strangely, earlier this year Arben (same screen name: arbishco) posted an Albanian translation for PJ IRC.
Now the shit really hits the fan. I started searching though his network of sites starting from bumpnetworks.com and found something even more interesting. If he's ripping off PearPC and violating the GPL, this is not the first time he's violated the GPL. On his bumpnetworks.com site, he has a link to piece of software he claims to have written, PdfConv (Link to image of description on website).
Now, as you'll see in the circled text, he claims it's based on Xpdf and VeryPDF. I went to VeryPDF and found their application PDF2HTML. Sure enough the product was GPL licensed and the source code is freely available (As seen in the following image). I downloaded trials of both to see how much different PdfConf was from PDF2HTML.
To Arben's credit, the interface is different from PDF2HTML, but identical in all other functions. The output from the same PDF file was almost identical. The only difference was that he took the time to remove the copyright notices from the generated html files. (As seen in this example graphical diff produced by WinMerge.) His output is on the left, PDF2HTML's output is on the right. Notice the only difference is the removal of the copyright notice.
I don't know if Arben changed any of PDF2HTML's code, but if he did, I'm not very confident he respected the GPL. From this, I have pretty good reason he is again disrespecting the GPL by pawning PearPC off as his own application. Finally, to summarize some other troublesome aspects regarding Arben, I found this slashdot post:
Sorry for all the inline images. I found this detective work fascinating, and I think its clear that Arben is perpetrating a fraud and that he personally has no respect for the GPL.
October 16th update:
I sent an email to Arben with a link to this page and a request to honor PearPC's GPL. This is the response I received:
From: CherryOS Team [mailto:mail@cherryos.com]
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 3:18 AM
To: 'Dean Beeler'
Subject: RE: PearPC is GPL (via Web form)
Hi Dean,
I am already talking to the PearPC.net webmaster, he will receive the trial as one of the first - because he treated us with respect and an open mind. I will let PearPC test the @#$@ out of CherryOS so you guys can try to prove your points. As you can see I have another product called www.vx30.com, and believe me I am not a person who wants to loose all his reputation. If you contact VeryPDF and ask them about our relationship - he will tell you that there was never one problem and I respected his rights and requests as soon they where submitted to me. I even can send you the communication between us.
I will and am respecting the PearPC GPL and the PearPC community! If people wont like the CherryOS emulation, then trash me then. If people don't want to purchase, they can use
This guy is way out there
The article says:
The complex system was ostensibly written in four months by Kryeziu alone, who claims it performs at about 80 percent of the speed of the PC host's hardware.
So he is saying he wrote the entire program.
The GNU GPL http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html says:
2.a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
It goes without saying if he claims to have written it he did not include this information, and he is in violation of the license in which PearPC was released.
I, and this is just my opinion here, interpret the GPL as encouraging developers to take others ideas to a new level, not stealing their code in attempt to make a profit.
- Hubert
That's utterly false. Every distribution gives credit to the base system GNU and the Linux kernel. You sir, are not up on your facts.
http://www.kernel.org/ and http://www.gnu.org/ are good places to start.
psst, use this code I ripped from PearOS and you'll be cool: #define SPIRO_MULTIMAX_3000 i
As a business owner, this just confirms what I've always felt about the GPL: it is anti-capitalist and prevents people from owning their own property. Who knows how much or how little code may have been taken; it could just be a few trivial routines. Nonetheless, the viral GPL license means that the many improvements this man has no doubt made no longer belong to him, but instead must be forced into the public domain under the provision's of the GPL. I'll never license my code under the GPL, and I encourage everyone who cares about freedom to do the same.
that SCO or MS will shortly come out backing Cherry and offering to fund it as well?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wish there was a /.TV channel so that this would play out in a 60minutes style camera ambush on this guy.
We have seen the forum equivalent of that ambush but it is just not the same as watching this guy squirm as he is caught in his many lies.
DF
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
On another note, it appears he's trying for an SCO style attack, where he repeats things so many times that people start to think that it must be true... and he's probably counting on the PearPC folks not having enough money to fight him in court. That's if he's actually planning to release his modified copy, to anyone but the press, which is also in question.
knowing a bit about PPC/x86 code translation and cross-platform emulation, and also knowing others who are currently working on many emulation projects, I can safely say that 80% performance is pretty much impossible in what he is doing. First off, you have little-endian vs. big endian architectures to deal with; then you have to also factor in OS overhead, memory management translation, processor-unique opcodes that must have their logic translated to a different meme, incompatible register types, etc. The PearPC guys did an excellent job of overcoming all these hurdles, but as anyone who has used PearPC knows, routing around the obstacles comes with a massive performance hit. If he said that CherryOS took an 80% performance hit and that a technology beta was going to be released soon, he would at least be talking in the realms of remote possibility.
I hope he likes bartending, or that the poor fool whose name he's possibly been using finds out what he's been up to before it is too late.
When I'm thinking of variable names my mind often turns to thoughts of Spiro Agnew. And then of course, he was developing Cherry OS so thoughts immediatley turn to the movie Cherry 2000 and if a sequel (obviosuly named Cherry 3000) would be released.
Then you come to the thought that this method is muti to the max, and out pops SPIRO MULTIMAX 3000 right in the middle of your code. I must have that happen several times a day myself, and I don't even work with code that has anything to do with cherries - I just find them a tasty snack.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Now this is what I call one sophisticated phishing scheme. They managed to get otherwise smart people knowledgeable about technology to hand over their personal info in the hopes of getting something most of them would admit sounds too good to be true. I wonder how many of the same people responded to the "email veerification request" messages claiming to be credit card companies. In my mind any company that has not proven anything in the real world is sure as sh*t not getting anything from me. I'd be curious how many people actually signed up on their website for the pre-release of the software.
Does anyone else some how find that his VX30 might be a rip off of the ogg theora java port. The fact that its listed on this site, right next to the java port of ogg theora is fishy..
- Find successful, interesting, or promising open-source/free-software product.
- Steal that product's code.
- Get your "new" commercial/pseudo-commercial/"subscription coerced" project covered on Slashdot
- Profit!!!!
And the sick fact is, this moneymaking scheme works. How much money do you think "CherryOS" has made sinceWant to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
And I'm not a die-hard "Everything must be by the book!" type-a guy, but what's to prevent some a-hole, which this Arben does appear to be shaping up as, from abusing the hell outta the GPL by copying, stealing, and selling the source of a GPL project as their own?
Yes, we do have the world-renowned "Slashdot Effect", which may cost him or her a little with their hosting company, but what other ramifications does the average GPLer hope for in cases such as this (profiting from GPL'd code without giving credit or $$ to the actual creators)?
I suppose that if the problem were big enough, one might hope for some support from the EFF, and perhaps there's some other well-intending lawyers for the bigger GPL cases, but I see little to actually deal with some of guys like this. If I call up his local police, they'll be laughing at me all the way to the donut shop, not running over to arrest him and charge him with violating the GPL.
And the worst part of this, in my view, is that the average consumer isn't a geek, and so losers like this can still make money off them since they aren't privy to this "elite geek knowledge", as we obviously are. You and me can laugh tomorrow about how CherryOS is appearing to be every bit the fake that we all thought it was last week when it hit the boards, but the average guy who just wants to run that cool OSX on his $300 PC isn't going to be privy to this kinda news. So ol' Arben's still likely to make a nice bit of money off these people before disapearing with some easy cash (potentially, of course - There's no smoking gun showing that CherryOS is a fake yet to my knowledge).
So other than losing a few potential sales to us geeks, and getting a bad rap in the nerd pools around the world, is that all this guy can expect? Certainly the average GPL code writer's not going to have the knowhow or money to go after an anonymous name who could be anywhere in the world.
Does this kinda thing happen a lot? I can see where someone could likely get away with this and make some nice cash if they were to avoid very visible, and geeky products such as this. I mean... If I'm writing closed-source IVR software in Russia, and I just repackage a bunch of open source code as my own, what's the odds that anyone would notice? Now... Stealing a product as new, and with as big of "WOW" factor as PearPC takes some big balls, or a lot of stupidity, but for a lot of smaller, or less public projects, it wouldn't surprise me to find this was happening more often than people want to know about.
And for that matter, what's to prevent all the entepreneurs(sp?) out there reading this story from doing this? I can see at least one Slashdot reader going "It's just the GPL, and it looks like it's easy money! I'll just register me a fake domain, erase some copyrights and come up with a logo, and voila! I'm ready to start selling me my new Internet browser "FireWolf" for a nice profit"?
Sorry if this is a well known thing... I tend to avoid philosophic discussions on the GPL as often it's a lot of flaming, and little real knowledge, but this is a question I've always wondered, yet have never seen definatively answered.
The first thing I thought when I read the original /. story was that it sounded like Project David all over again.
Project David was allegedly an entirely new way of running Windows applications on Linux, covered on slashdot here which was suspiciously similar to the Wine project...
Black ops helicopters come at night and you and your family are shot. Or so I've heard. That might have been rumours, though.
Actually, nothing happens in the first place. If the original copyright holders know about it, they might initiate legal action. If you violate the GPL, you're typically redistributing without complying with the GPL. The GPL grants special rights to redistribute under certain conditions; without the GPL redistribution is copyright violation or something similar. That's the beauty of it - if you think the GPL is unfair and invalid for some reason, that's cool, you don't have to work with it, but the default rules without the GPL are a lot stricter.
Several companies (e.g. Belkin) have been coerced into releasing the source and complying with the GPL under threat of legal action, but as far as I know there has not yet been a legal challenged fought to the end. It very much is a matter of financial power, I guess, at least in the U.S. There are organisations and funds who can help the GPL developer in need, e.g. notably the FSF, which fights for the GPL of those projects whose copyrights were assigned to the FSF.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
A simple search would have answered that... http://www.werewolves.org/~follies/
Didn't anyone read the original post? Didn't anyone notice? We were USED! He wanted to get slashdotted! He wanted our hits! We were a stress test!
/. crowd to hit his servers.
The "CherryOS" was just a blind to get the
We've been had.
That raises the question. Now what?
--LWM
When did we start modding "I told you so" posts insightful again? Maybe if there was some content, or even a link to an "I told you so" post, but this? BTW, I remember thinking to myself "Wow, the Ge6600 is going to be a great budget graphics card" when I first heard about it.
Glad to see my expectations were maintained. Mod me up, please.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
There once was a time when journalists asked questions instead of quoting press releases..
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Assuming that he never actually accepts orders for CherryOS, is he still guilty of infringment?
"I'm very excited about the prospect of monkeys flying out of UrgleHoth's nether eye," said Dr. Dew. "I'm just glad they're not going to fly out of mine."
Only on
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
My letter to the CherryOS people, dated 5 days ago:
----cut here------
I'm interested in Cherry OS but I need to know how well it stacks up against
PearPC (http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.pearpc.net/).
Two questions in particular:
1) what are the advantages and disadvantages of Cherry OS vs. PearPC? At a
minimum, I'd expect ease of installation, ease of use, and customer service to
be higher in a commercial product.
2) does Cherry OS use any PearPC code?
The latter is particularly important, because
1) I need to know if security vulnerabilities are likely to be common to both
products or are likely to be different.
2) Using widely-used open-source software in a commercial product is a
competitive advantage for you, in that bugs are more likely to be found and
fixed quicker.
If your product is based on PearPC, please note that, as with Linux, if I find
I use an open-source program heavily and come to depend on up-to-date
maintenance, I'm willing to pay for it.
I do expect that if your product uses any open-source code, you are complying
with the licenses. In the case of PearPC, this is the GNU Public License, the
same lincense that made wildly-successful companies like RedHat and SuSE (now
part of Novell) to earn billions of dollars.
Oh, congradulations on being Slashdotted. Even though it was a minor
inconvenience for you, it is a badge of honor.
----cut here------
Well, looks like I gave them the benefit of the doubt and they betrayed me. Sigh.
Thankfully, it looks like I was wrong about the "minor" inconvenience. The light of day scares the roaches away.
If only they'd come out and said "PearPC free, technical support and priority bug fixes, $50" that might sell.
CherryOS is down at the moment, here's Google's Cache. Enjoy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This guys even built a 10 levels MLM scheme for that Gaim ripoff... I wonder if the ads would irritate me more or the people trying to convince me to join the MLM...
this all brings to question: how many closed source companies live only from ripping off open source? hiding the traces, adding some stuff, releasing wondrously written self-serving press releases, where they denigrate open source and claim their own 'ingenuity and briliiance'?
who's really checking on them?
----------------
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
FYI, in the same thread Alex Crouzen writes:
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
This two programs are completely different. I think you are all comparing pears to cherries.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
Specks
Batteries not included
The link between MXS and SCO is uncanny. They both are 1. Acronym Companies 2. Making accusations that they can't back up 3. Deny lying 4. Have been proven lying 5. Have a front man (McBride and Kryeziu)
Favourite quote (paraphrased?) from a recent article: "Cherry OS is nothing like PearPC. PearPC is way slow."
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Can PearPC run OS X at 80% speed?
Well, a very nicely equipped PC could probably run OS X 80% as fast as a low end G3. If that's what you meant.
Because ints are for pussies...didn't you get that memo?
Trying is the First Step to Failing --Homer Simpson
It's funny that point number two is just as true as point number one, but everyone on Slashdot seems to forget that when someone "steals" open source code. Well, I say if the music companies get no sympathy for people "stealing" their music, then open source coders deserve no sympathy for people "stealing" their code. "Get a better business model", right?
But ghost's functionality is NOT a difficult concept for any Unix. I mean, it's all UI and calling commands like fdisk, dd, gzip, etc.
Why do you even need a program? Just tell someone to boot off a rescue CD and use DHCP, dd over the network to a server, what's the big deal?
Mountain out of a molehill.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
So, we're all up in arms because some guy stole GPL code (note the use of the word "taken" and "stole" used throughout the article and discussion).
And yet, this attitude magically disappears in an MP3 or movie piracy article? Suddenly, THAT kind of piracy isn't "theft?" Honestly, what's the difference? In both cases, someone else's copyrighted materials are taken and used for their own purposes.
I don't get the Slashdot double standard. Copyright only ever matters when some person's GPL code gets taken. Then, all the sudden people have morals. If you pirate movies and music, would you get up in arms if someone took your GPL code and did what they wanted without giving you credit? Would you realize how much of a hypocrite you'd be if you did?
On their site they also list another product called Ad-Stats which is a doctored version of phpAdsNew complete with screen shots which identicaly match phpAdsNew interface, again with no copyright attribution. The preferences settings are all identical, the general layout is unchanged, except the graphics have been doctored a bit and a whole lot of prompts have been slightly renamed from 'campaign' to 'clip'. Way to go.
Actually, if you were paying attention, the Church-Turing thesis is not what's being challenged. That thesis mentions nothing about the speed of emulation. It's the CherryOS "author's" claims of 80% of the speed of the host CPU which are preposterous.
:)
All Church-Turing actually talks about is the ability to translate any Program into a Turing machine and to transform any Turing machine into a program.
PearPC emulates PPC on ix86 hardware, but it is very slow even with JIT compilation. Many emulation companies spend YEARS getting the emulation up to acceptable/usable levels.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Piracy is different when you start selling pirated works online.
In civilised countries, piracy *begins* when you start selling the works. That's what piracy *is*.
Copyright infringement without monetary gain is just called "copyright infringement".
Apparently, Arben Kryeziu is really no deveoper of any kind.
As people already suspected, he stole the PearPC code for CherryOS, he most likely stole Java code for his VX streamer (see posts above). And now I have reason to suspect that he also did not develop the bumpnetworks.com website.
He posted an outsourcing bid for one of his web site developments (bumpnetworks.com?). Search on that page for the string "Hello Arben Kryeziu" and "Hello Bumpnetworks" to confirm this. Now scroll to the winner's bid (will say "AWARDED" on the left). His location Donetsk, UA (Ukraine -> Russia). Now, go to bumpnetworks.com and follow the menu: "Company -> Partnerships." You will discover Site-Mechanics to be a partner. Go there and visit their clientele references. You will notice that most of the clients and work done was in Russia(n). Could it be that that guy developed bumpnetworks.com (and many other)?
That leaves us with the original question: what did he really develop or did he "outsource and share code" (LOL) for everything. He seems to be good at talking the language of "the suits" and seems to be better at being a manager than doing the actual work.
Well here is the answer, which is also my GRAND FINALE!!!
if you visit his Elance Feedback profile and scroll all the way to the end you will notice TWO bids he put up:
#1 "Web Programming pdf to html conversion Beaux US$1,500.00"
AND...
#2 "Application Development PowerPC Emulator comsdev US$2,700.00"
If you visit both bids (bid 1 and bid 2 you will notice that he actually paid OTHER teams at Elance.com to do the dirty work for him.
I have very strong reason to suspect that he never wrote ANY part of any code of any kind! Instead, the people that actually STOLE the code from PearPC and PDF2HTML (read to verify) are the actual perpetrators!!!
How come nobody else established this connection?!
W.