Ready.
copycat82 is plagiarizing, immensely faulty, and is an evidence of the lack-of-achievement, very unsuggestive of a Ph.D. title, which has decades-long consequences. What occurs when you tell these, even with perfect evidence? Do you get a crowded-mouthed reply, which boggles your mind? If so, then this page may be a gold mine, with the anti-confusion toolset, a list of one-stop-shopping of answers against attention-diverting, sentiments-abusing trickery, and against "everybody is like that" sort of argumentation.
The strength of my answers, here, are mainly in their multiple-angles-at-once viewing of the issues, weighing, and linking/integrating the different aspects. This helps for not being swayed. Standing with the hard facts, may save time in informing/convincing others. Referencing the facts that are relevant to each other, together in groups, may help further, when there are attempts to confuse/stop/divert a movement.
As long as the person is not willing to apply it, then speaking-only does not mean anything. Likewise, if the person/group is abusing the terminology (or, words overheard from somewhere, and memorized from there), in ways that are not the reasons why other people are valueing those words, or the concepts they refer to.
For example, being tolerant, and being helpful, and/or friendly, are valuable traits to find in a member of our human societies, but if those are finding their expression, out of other people's pockets, e.g. when sitting in, as a jury member, to grant a title/license or not, then that is not (the context) why we value those terms. That is the nominee who should show his/her being help-abled, competent, etc. A jury member, taken as an authority, to approve/reject the worth of a work/person, should keep in mind first, those other people, out there, who will meet the false-licensee, and should be rather critical, and demanding full answers, instead of doing a lot of guessing (and falling into traps of illusion), and evaluate the answers thorouhly, to satisfaction of concerns, well before embracing.
Anybody may (ab)use the right words - even without intending the right actions. Therefore, I intend to provide comparing/contrasting of relevant desirable-terms, and to discuss the appropriateness of them, in the given context. That should help against abuses of cherished virtues, even if in name-only. When we are convinced that "Right makes might," we should also do our share, by expressing the right words, with the appropriate pointing to their full meanings, and thereby, not leaving those words in the wrong mouths, rather than only hoping to be understood right. May the Almighty stand behind the right, any way, of course. But let's do our little share, and hold on to what we have, already.
If you have already read some other pages of mine, at this site, some of the discussions that follow may be a re-reading, at least in part. This is a central repository of refined anti-confusion tools, and their being placed in more than one point, when that fits strategically, is only more meaningful, in my judgment.
In presence of all those un-referenced material in copycat82 (e.g: Petri nets, E-nets, etc.), if you label all of them as "computer science basics" and insist that copycat82 need not cite what "any computer science student should know," I would ask you: "What is left then?" The content of those papers already cover this." A full-cover of the content by the preceding literature, with whatever explanation/excuse, would still be unoriginality, and need not be granted a Ph.D.
Learning, as a form of accomplishment, entails being able to do. Especially so, in branches of applied and/or experimental sciences, and engineering. Memorizing only cannot be a goal. If having labeled that (uncited) material as "basic computer science," how may such a faulty person be assumed to be "understanding" the substance, and carrying even a B.S degree in computer science?
The copycat82 is exaggeratedly faulty. It is published material, and has been granted a title. Upon that, a comment like "Everybody makes errors. So what?" does not apply.
Part of the answer to that question is : Not everyone. And not so many! And, not probably when claiming to be presenting a Ph.D. dissertation in the very field of "... designing and analyzing ..." And not with so many of them being quite easily identifiable, yet being so persistent. The final published copycat82 (through UMI), and the UnPaper that got published a year later, still prsent the faulty. Were they waiting for a tooth fairy, or myself, to come and point to the errors? And to self-contradictions, and to plagiarism, etc. etc.
The exaggerated faultiness in copycat82 is beyond acceptable tolerance limits. Imagine someone who makes so many erros in published material, later, facing unknowing students. If not correct, or block, that person, when you know better, how to expect the students deal with it? And all that occurrence in a supposedly "... design and analysis ..." dissertation, is only anathema. That is supposed to be its very topic. Nothing else. If even not that, then why exists, at all?
A jury position is not a place to care your ego, being shy of asking what you did not understand. If you did not ưnderstand fully, or did not find anything new, and substantive, then you should decline from casting a passing mark. It is the responsibility of the presenter to answer the questions, to the full understanding/satisfaction of the jury. Or else, that jury member who cannot grasp it, should not give a passing mark. How do you license someone who cannot tell you, a professor yourself, what he/she claims to have produced oneself, to go on and "teach" others, what he/she only will read from books others have written?
An evasive description of functionality of a mathematical object (the effective description being "distributed" among pages, and not inter-linked), hides this double-nature out of sight. It is like telling something is an apple, but looking at an orange, and describing that. In a page or two the description of an apple may be given. But in other pages, the statements gradually, suggest being an orange, to such a point that, at the end, it is more orange, than apple, but neither an apple nor an orange, in full.
That sort of evasiveness may even get some rightfully-objecting people stopped. After being "answered" like that, once or twice, people may get tricked by their false-conscience, not to inquire further. The faulty, and vague, thereby may get canonical. May the jury beware.
For example, "If you had read the page_xy thoroughly, you would see the statement that ..." The copycat82 defines itself as Petri nets like, but when you sum up the modifications, and the here-and-there assumption statements spread around the text, it is becoming E-nets. When you evaluate it as a Petri net, it is more erroneous than when evaluated with E-nets assumptions.
It is about translating from one formalism, to another (cf. classroom plagiarism, with the replacing of variable names, and/or shifting a few shapes, or functions, to different places). Not everybody may be able to tell that it is E-nets, by only reading a page or two of definitions. That is spread around. And when the merge-clashes occur, even those stated (imported) assumptions may not hold, and may be listed only as false assumptions. For example, copycat82 makes the individual states of an E-net primitive-transition into sveral static elements, but then, unlike E-nets, that cannot be changed at run-time. That may be why, in the copycat82, we find all those "xor-in" macros at the i/o gates, although they keep leading to wrong usages, because with E-nets, as found in the E-net examples, a resolution location starts as undefined, where it is equivalent to the "xor-in" macro. But right then, when the resolution procedure operates, that value changes, and some priority may be assigned. If you just look at the E-net examples and translate into a static representation, then the case is what we find committed in copycat82.
Another example may be copycat82's stating the assumption of "limitation of boundedness" of places imposed through transformations. But in the examples, there is no such boundedness. The structural assumptions of E-nets, inferrably, becomes verification-time assumptions for copycat82 - which does not provide the same (full) functionality of E-nets (w.r.t. dynamics of simulation), but the intended meaning is there. (That does not allow a simulation, and to discover further, when the waiting token leads to abortion of the whole process of verification - with a strict requirement of boundednness. In E-nets case, it only waits to fire next.)
An author has a right to decide what is within, and what is beyond the scope of a publication, but that should leave something within scope, and there must be some (new) contribution there, and we should have the right to evaluate that within the declared scope, with the criteria of novelty, consistency, and providing some value. The declarations of "beyond-the-scopeness" should leave something within scope, including the proofs of any novel claims of workability. And that must be something worth mentioning, something new, at the least. Advertising a topic as being included, but then when we finally find its place, if we meet "beyond-the-scope" waivers, including the omissions of any proofs, then it turns out to be only an illusion. (Those unproven, as a matter of fact, turn out to be provable in the reverse. i.e. In many cases, after asking "Where is the proof for this?" one may find the counter-example, and while formulating a counter-example, one may even find some very prototype of it in the figures of copycat82. If copycat82 had cared to ponder and verify its own examples, the fallability of the presented, would have to be clear.)
The declared scope cannot exclude structurally (or functionally) similar studies, either. When all it deals with, about distributed systems, is the assignment to nodes, and even that without any originality in any algorithm, or design innovation, then attempting to advertise itself as "being for application and opertaing system layers, and not for the lower layers of network" is irrelevant. It does not deal, let alone solve, with any [other] problems of distributed systems. It is only about who sends message to whom. How may that be differentiated from anything but the physical layer (electrical signals), if that. As a result, the thoroughly studied literature, in those areas, is also applicable. See, for example Danthine (1980) paper, combining Petri nets with the X-transition of E-nets, discussing interface-machines, etc.
I do think my position is a requisite for a truly merciful, good-willing stance. You can not give up being critical, when on board, as a Ph.D. jury. Even beyond an ordinary research paper, a Ph.D. dissertation should be evaluated very thoroughly, for its grasp, as well as contribution. If you do not do it there, and license that person a Ph.D. title, how will the students in the class surmount the barrier of his/her being unable to grasp? Unless, of course, the "student" is not a real student, but someone who knows the content better than the "lecturer," but this may be rare, and dealing with the roots and the branches of the issue may have become rather problematic, by then. The responsibility is in the jury.
Having licensed such a person, means a decades long career. Think of the students who will pay part of their lives, and money, and only find that person, without probably even knowing that they are receiving a low-quality service.
Not to mention the potential disasters if the person attempts to do any work, at the topic, and at the quality of his Ph.D. publication. What qualifies him for that? A misplaced "benevolence" of the jury? - not to be harsh on a prospective member of the academic community, a upside-down perception of the time-schedule. Evaluation should take place, before embracement.
Being merciful is good. But labeling a leniency towards a long-time tyrant/torturer, at a moment when he is being cornered and "looking helpless," with that, then it is very much a reversal of the term, and very likely not for good, but for evil. If you were not able to stop the abuses/tortures before being, what right do you have to be lenient, and especially, to give a second opportunity to go on, if that moment of helplessness subsides? If the strongs of us, when strong, do not assert, the weaks of us get crushed, by them and their equally unrightful subordinates, attacking into our privacies, grabbing our property, torturing our bodies, etc. This is a general issue. You may close your eyes, but you cannot avoid it. As long as Goliath exists, may Dawud (a.s., David) assert. As long as Goliathness exists, may Dawudness not stop.