Thanks for that.

Adding “#L34” to the vnl URI nails it for me:


That's a lot more than just a structural similarity.

It’s hard for me to see this as anything other than incontrovertible evidence of the author having a naively self-centred perspective on intellectual property rights, broadly translatable as “what’s yours is mine and what’s mine’s my own”.

More tellingly, it's also hard to reconcile this evident difficulty in critical thinking with any kind of work in the area of cryptography, notorious for its relentlessly stern demands of cognitive sophistication in its proponents.

Stand back a few yards and the picture becomes somewhat clearer. I've not even bothered looking at vnl, being confident that it’s just another variant of the “misunderstood but brilliant maverick outsider, wronged by a complacent community” media narrative and all the posturing is entirely consistent, even the expedient arrogation of others’ work. Given the evidence in the codebase, I'm reassured that my confidence is not misplaced, although I do have to admit that his choice of pseudonym is a bit of a give-away in and of itself.


Cheers

Graham