It was first brought to my attention by davy2002a on the Doom Legacy forums a few days ago:

http://forums.newdoom.com/showthread.php?t=28875

Then Boingo the Clown brought the word to John Romero's forums:

http://www.johnromero.com/phpubb/vie...c28dbadf9a8ddd

And now it comes to you.

[removed] is a software scam artist who steals the work of other programmers and teams, renames the program, put's "Michael J. Hardy's" in front of it, and sells it. Usually the originals of these programs are available for free. Clearly, uninformed or new users can be tricked by this man and might end up paying him for free software.

He has stolen programs like Mozilla, DOOM, and other freeware and open source games and programs. Also, he claimed to have written the popular Quake 2 mod Quake 2 Evolved. Information on him is available HERE.

Please get the word out about this scammer!

Although selling GPL'd software and OSS under many other licenses (e.g., Mozilla) is totally legal, he is violating the GPL and other licenses in several ways:

1. Gross misrepresentation of his involvement. This is fraudulent and claiming others' work as your own is a violation of copyright laws. Also, incorporating others' trade and service marks into your own work is illegal unless it's for the purpose of commentary, satire, or parody.

2. Not giving claim to the original authors who contributed to the projects. This is tied into #1, above.

3. Restricting availability of the source code

4. Restricting the GPL'd components by claiming it is under his exclusive license and restricting redistribution. This is expressly forbidden by the GPL

Has anyone told the rightful owners of the software? Otherwise, they are wasting their collective time.

Some of the owners have been notified. id Software, creators of DOOM, has been told, and I got this:

"Yes, it's a rip off. No, he doesn't have our permission. That was a lie.

tsh"

All,

It's an LQ policy to not allow personal issues such as this to smolder in the forums. As a result I'm going to close this thread. If anyone had any questions, feel free to contact me.

--jeremy