You can already use Devolution with a USB loader. Devolution's binary blob is like a plugin.
It checks to see if the disk in the drive is a DVD-R disk or not as part of it's checks. The original IOS's and the original MIOS still perform the same check, too, so the drive is perfectly capable of distinguishing between the two (that's part of what they patched out when they started making cIOS's). There are a FEW cases where a modchip can work to trick it but it seems to check for a modchip, too, and fewer and fewer modchips were making it past the verification process as newer versions came out so I can only guess he's adding more brands to that check.
I don't think so. That would mean he buys every modchip. I rather think it's more a trial and error thing.
Usually the drive itself can tell but Wii modchips are usually onto the middle of the drive's data cable and so they just intercept the request and response when the drive is being asked if it's a burned disk or not and change the answer to say it's a retail disk so the motherboard only ever gets that answer and can't tell the difference.
I don't know if there are other coders, but that conclusion is faulty.
That might very well be but we have no way of knowing (patches are usually send by email).
He may be the only one committing them to the SVN, but that could be because he's (one of) the only person(/people) with SVN commit access. It's possible other people are sending code to him (e.g. via email, as PsyBlade mentioned) and he's just merging it with his existing code and committing it to the SVN. No idea if this is the case or not, but it's certainly possible (although I would hope crediar would credit those responsible for the code).
If that was the case, he would have credited people in the commit logs. I don't recall him doing so. The other person who has commit access is a friend of his (I forgot his username, but he is registered here, too). This person has committed code, too, but I recall him claiming that it was crediar's code.
