The Hackulous pirating site is dedicated to cracking and distributing iPhone applications without paying any money to their developers. In what can only be described as hilarious irony, a beta version of that application was itself pirated and released (cached) before it could enter a full open-source distribution.

SaladFork, the author of Crackulous, called the leak "absolutely disgusting, and downright insulting." He writes about his pride of development, saying, "[I] have released a new version of Crackulous almost every day or two, fixing all the bugs that had been reported up until that day. I was proud of Crackulous, and put a large majority of my free time into ensuring it will be the best application it possibly could be. I responded to beta tester feedback, and each version of Crackulous was better than the last."

Alas, one of his pirate compatriots betrayed him, allowing the Crackulous beta to be freely downloaded. After a time of reflection and calming down, SaladFork announced that he would not, after all, be abandoning the project (cached) and looks forward to a public release. He asked, however, that bloggers and forum members not spread the leak, putting his faith in their humanity and goodness. He wrote, "Several of you had noticed the irony in me complaining that a tool used to steal from other developers was stolen, but I hope you realize the difference in situation. iPhone developers almost always (99% of the time) develop applications for the App Store in hopes of getting money."

Leaving aside the obvious jokes about honor among thieves, it's a shame this experience was not more of an ethical learning opportunity for Mr. SaladFork and his friends.