Since it's literally open-source, perhaps he's looking at creating the Cool Dragon Dolphin distribution with his own labels. There's been casual talk about forking a new ad-free version in some older posts.

Dolphin is licensed with CC 3.0 allowing derivative products and even their distribution, and as such it's not really a matter of honesty at all. Removing of ads is 1. not explicitly forbidden, and 2. implicitly allowed (as any other modifications), by the Dolphin Creative Commons license.