Is he going to bring up that stupid puzzle again now?
This is what you get when you let your sloppy thinking and your biases harden up into a catch-phrase. No need to think about the subject anymore, you can just blithely trot out your 3 sentence rejoinder to the subject and go on your merry way. The problem is that it's never really been about asking people to work for free, though I'm not sure how asking people to do your research for you, provide you with free graphics, and write features your staff is too busy to write is different from asking people to work for free. Oh right, in your case it's working together. This guy is either suffering from total disconnect or is the biggest scam artist in the business.