The more primary source links for this controversy are at https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2013-July/047140.html and https://lists.cypherpunks.ca/pipermail/otr-users/2013-July/002232.html .  If you click forward on the second link, which appears to have no replies, you can see Randolph continues discussing GoldBug in a different thread.

I am _guessing_ that Randolph was either involved in developing GoldBug, or was trying to influence GoldBug's public appearance in some way.  It's hard to tell whether the expressions are intended to advertise GoldBug or make them appear sketchy.

My first guess was that Randolph was a one-man team who did not speak English as their first language, and they were trying to advertise their work in ways they were familiar with, by pretending to be somebody else stumbling upon it.  I don't really know.

The comments on the echo protocol make it sound a little bit like the bitmessage protocol.

As always, the answers are in the source code, and it is open source.  If it phones home it is bad, etc, if it does everything e2e it is good, etc.