While they were developing and perfecting it, they mined a lot of coins, most of the Bytecoins that will ever be circulated. They could have just thrown all their old coins out and started with a new blockchain when the coin was released, so they aren't saints. But they are not villains either, they gave the world a new cryptocoin technology, better than bitcoin in several ways.
You have strange definitions if you think people lying, forging documents, operating as shills, and and other disreputable methods "aren't saints. But they aren't villains either" I guess it comes down to a matter of opinion but I view people who try to commit that kind of fraud on the community as being villains.
Yes the technology is good. As open source, the world is free to use as we see fit, and they deserve to be respected for the technology and the open source release, although I really don't believe their goals were noble at all. I think they just felt that it gave their secretly 82%-premined coin a better chance to make them rich. A closed source coin would likely go nowhere (a few have tried).
Use as we see fit includes creating new coins that have nothing to do with their underhanded schemes/scams.
If you really want to work on a "learning experience" I'd suggest you do just that and stop wasting your time with "Quazarcoin" which hasn't really added anything to this process at all.
BTW, you don't really know the Bytecoin promoters are the ones who developed the Cryptonote technology (unless you know more than you are letting on). Maybe they bought it or something?
The original poster seemed to be concerned that the Bytecoin developers aren't well known. Personally, I don't give a rat's ass whether they are known or not. The fact is they did something good.
I guess different people can read different things out of the post. I read more about what they did than who they are. But then since I was there paying close attention (and pointing out a few contradictions) when they were trying to pull off the scam, I may have had more interest in that part of it.