It all started in 2010, really. He badmouthed and harassed his competitor, Kenom, until he (for theoretically unrelated reasons) left the forum. Some pretty bad nastiness on both sides happened during that time. But... I'll fast-forward to the beginning of my open-source projects.
I was thinking about developing OpenLPM:
http://laserpointerforums.com/f44/open-source-lpm-project-base-your-thoughts-66110.html
Instead of being supportive of someone contributing to the community, Jerry reacted negatively, responding to the idea of "spurring innovation" by accusing me of only trying to "innovate a feather in my cap." He got defensive and didn't want it around... because it would compete with the datalogger circuit he had just released.
He gave up on outright killing the project, but instead settled for plugging his competing products in the thread.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f70/openlpm-free-open-source-lpm-project-71232.html#post1026281
He was treating an open-source project like competition, trying to eradicate it.
So, then comes Peregrine.
In its very early stages, he was attacking it... he was angry that I made free software that could read the data a LaserBee outputs, and even "talked to his lawyer" about it. He ultimately came back "in support" of the project, but only after his lawyer said that my open-source project was completely legal and that a lawsuit would be laughed out of the courtroom.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f70/laserbee-raw-output-now-visible-osx-environment-73308.html
Here's the kicker though - he hates the Windows version, but loves the Mac version.
So, fast forward to the actual release of Peregrine!
Here, he further attacks open-source, including making claims that Peregrine could damage LaserBees... in an effort to stop people from using the software. In this thread, he is particularly caustic.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f70/peregrine-free-open-source-lpm-interface-80589.html
It's incredible the lengths he went to to attack an open-source project. I made nothing from it... maybe $50 of donations compared to the hundreds of hours I spent building it... but he treats it like competition. All it does is give the community more options... but he still hates it.
Around the same time, I was working on Ellipsis. Ellipsis is my project where I rewrote the firmware on my LaserBee I. I intended to make that an open-source project to help developers, but it ultimately did not get released. Jerry was pretty well-behaved in that thread. It is, however, a good read if you're interested in the ins and outs of how LaserBees work.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f70/e...ent-updates-build-notes-media-more-75723.html
I did ultimately release an (open-source, obviously
) SDK that contains example code for people who may want to write code on their LaserBee. Jerry, of course, gets angry. He attacks my character by lying about me "shafting" people. I address that in my reply in the thread.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f70/open-source-laserbee-sdk-83631.html
Then there's just other assorted drama. After ARG and I released the Rubicon, there was a large argument about the calibrated state of Ophir sensors from ebay. ARG and I had found that some are outside the tolerance, while Jerry claimed that all of them are within the calibration tolerance.
Nastiness ensues, and he accuses us of lying to sell our LPM's. Which is interesting - because we offer LPM's with no Ophir head, make LESS money on the LPM's we bundle with an Ophir head, and stand to gain nothing by selling our stock of Ophir sensors.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f70/ophir-20c-1-y-out-stock-82574-3.html#post1218038
And more recently, he's posted a thread in which he made dubiously sourced claimed about the Rubicon in an effort to discredit it. His claims were thoroughly examined and the "issue" was reproduced. He, of course, did not reappear in the thread to offer further evidence, a rebuttal, or an apology.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f70/strange-artifacts-new-lpm-s-output-85083.html
So yeah. The long and short of it is, Jerry hates competition. He hates open-source projects... probably because they make it easier to compete in the LPM "market" - what of it there is.
Jerry hates me, because I give my stuff away - and I am not so easily run out of town.
He deserves all those red bars for his behavior in the LPF marketplace. We could have so much better stuff now - but he repeatedly ran new developers off the forum to maintain his monopoly.
He'd rather expend effort harassing competition than innovating. In his experience, it is more effective.
Anyhow, during the time in which he had no competition, the price on the "budget" 2.5W USB LPM rose from $120 all the way up to over $200. The product got no better, but because he had no competition, he decided to fleece LPF for as much money as possible. He's benefited greatly through anticompetitive behavior.
If I think of more, I'll send it your way.
Trevor
