"illegal to lie to government official" - you generalize much. Lying itself isn't outlawed, only deception with the effect of damage to society. If there's no damage to society, there's no crime. It may be argued that fake tests like polygraphs don't serve the good of society and bypassing them doesn't harm it, thus it's not a crime.

"you" in this case being the lead developer. Anyone else who is doing this, is performing development work, and should be considered either a developer or an incompetent who is micromanaging something which is not his direct responsibility. For example, Debian's re-vote about init systems is definitely example of micromanagement, maybe not by a non-technical pointy-haired boss, but end result is the same.

Really? You really think you could tell them what tools to use building your house? Only by choosing a different team maybe. No matter if paid or no we're part of community, payments is just a way to manage scarce resources like time or materials.

In a proper community people's jobs are specialized. If you hire someone to build a house for you you don't tell him tools from which manufacturer to use in construction, likewise you don't tell which initsystem/DE a distro maintainer should use, or which IDE/editor/compiler a developer should use.

The problem is that users can't be allowed to decide which desktop environment or init system to use. They can only request particular features and then developers decide which DEs or whatever to use to implement them. That's the only way it can work. Otherwise you'll have no developers and maintainers, period. And who will implement stuff then?

It's nothing different from other European countries. For example, Russia itself long time ago lost its old capital, Kiev, to invaders from Poland and Lithuania. Stuff like that will keep happening until concept of nationality and national state is fully obsolete.

You're very naive if you think that USSR's communist party was unified. Only on paper maybe.

I don't see a problem here. But oil overall oil will deplete soon enough and the best alternative is solar IMO. You can draw large amounts of power with solar panels alone, probably enough for a computer.

Is there even any difference between republicans and democrats anymore? They both are merely vehicles though which companies rule US, communicating their desires via lobbies backed with contributions. They're like old USSR communist party, only instead of one "party of power" they made two.

that the biggest part of their entertainment value is in cracking the DRM.

Other people would be even less interested in working on it for free than you so my point stands.

Well, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever then. It is obvious that any current contributors would be most interested in working on it future, more than any other potential contributor. In fact, OP said that he's going to continue his work in this very thread thus answering my question. His issue was loss of company support due to him no longer working there.

Who? Potential contributors they're looking for you mean? Your reply is in wrong place then.

You gotta be kidding. Prison for life just for network intrusion? Most murders would warrant less than that. It's just another over the top law, like anti-blasphemy in Islam countries. No place for them in this century. Punishment must be according to the crime, and there's no way you could do something deserving a life sentence using computer hacking alone.

Even if it's illegal, counterfeiting isn't a term applicable here. It's violation of USB spec, nothing more. Counterfeiting involves deceit by definition, but device vendors definitely knew they're getting not an FTDI device but a replacement that can serve same function.