I think its kind of crappy that the author was doing us a favor by setting up a pool first only to get undercut by someone else. Especially when the author isn't pre-mining. Then again I'm guessing his pool will start first so we will see.
Well, 4% is not a favor. It's gauging. Had he gone with 1-2% I would support his pool in principle. But 4% is almost unheard of. Also, a diversity of pools is useful when some will inevitably go down.
I'm not quite sure I'd call this gouging. 3-4% is fairly standard with bigger pools these days. Plus, we still don't know if he might be using that extra fee for giveaways and bounties.