Eyeballing Rob Levin

[posted to the Full-Disclosure mailing list]

Odds are you’ve at least heard of Rob Levin (aka lilo), the director of Texas 501(3)(c) corporation Peer-Directed Projects Center. He’s been aptly mentioned in the Register as a “professional online beggar” and the incompetence with which he runs the Freenode IRC network has been aired many a time on popular blogs like Slashdot. In the past week, a group of hackers took over the Freenode IRC network by sniffing lilo’s *@*-bound oper block password off the wire, a gaping security issue that could have been resolved via many different means– an SSL port on a single freenode server for lilo to use, lilo sshing to a server and IRCing from localhost, or the binding of his oper block to his home host. This was proof enough for me that lilo is an idiot that wasn’t capable of running an IRC for a small group of friends, much less one hosting hundreds of open-source projects.

But what of lilo himself? Is he really this benevolent, though sometimes incompetent dictator he makes himself out to be? After the Freenode fiasco, I decided to poke around lilo’s personal life and get a glimpse of his character. The results are quite hilarious.

Everyone knows lilo lives in a trailer. He flaunts his existence as white trash with glee and twisted pride, playing the part of a martyr for the cause of open source software. He constantly talks about how poor and beaten down he is, despite having the leisure time to spend eleven hours a day chatting on the Internet. The address listed on the PDPC.us domain is indeed a trailer. Some quick poking around the Texas State Comptroller of Public Accounts shows the truth. That address is an office to which the business is registered, and the registered agent is Robert Levin of 9212 Burdine St, an apartment building in Houston.

For a man who claims to be such a martyr for open source development he has done almost nothing to advance it. He has never made any notable commits to open source projects. He has done almost nothing at all. The man is in his fifties and has nothing notable on his resume — a long history of manual labor and office tasks for monkeys. The truth about Rob is that he cannot code. His support of open source is limited to idly chatting away on IRC.

Rob and his wife both suck at the teat of the federal government by collecting disability. They both claim to have ADHD so intense that it prohibits them from holding a job. During the day, they go to the PDPC trailer to chat on IRC and answer phonecalls. Two disability checks and PDPC donations add up. Enough to pay for not only a reasonable apartment and the PDPC trailer, but for a Hispanic nanny to take care of their son and clean their house during the day (I would cite her name, address, and phone number but I do not feel it fitting that he should be harassed). Not only do they not feel it fitting to work at any task whatsoever, but they can’t even raise their child and clean up for themselves.

Personally I have supported open source with my blood, sweat, and tears. I work at least forty hours a week in a cubicle much smaller than Rob Levin’s trailer and go home to spend several more hours coding for projects that I feel are worthwhile. I do this not for personal gain, but to fight against a system of intellectual property law which I find overzealously rewards the rich and powerful. I’m not going to mention my name, but a good many of you know it. I’ve put commits into major operating systems and household name daemons.

Lilo is a fraud. He is a huckster that steals money that could be going to legitimate open source development. There are countless programmers with real, valuable talent who choose to work hard for the greater good rather than spending all their time selling their talents to the highest bidder. Lilo has no talent and epitomizes the kind of vile, undisciplined leech that I spend my time working against.

To the FOSS world: Do yourselves a favor and move to EFnet, Undernet, OFTC, anything but Freenode. EFnet now has chanfix and has not been a lawless packeteer playground for several years. The days of channel wars on EFnet are over. It also handles three times the traffic of Freenode without major incident.

Don’t believe me about Rob Levin? I pulled all his information from public record in the past twenty-four hours. Poke around his life and see for yourself:

Rob’s federal employer identification number is 74-3033697
The address officially listed for pdpc is 10100 main street #31 houson tx 77025.
Phone number for pdpc officially listed is 713-589-5863.
Rob’s ssn is 462 13 0351.
PDPC’s 11-digit texas state taxpayer number 32004514421
Rob’s apartment is at 9212 BURDINE ST. #1005 HOUSTON, TX 77096.
12-16-1955 is Rob’s birthday