Was Gaudapada Buddhist?

So there's this big controversy about Gaudapada being closet Buddhist and therefore Shankara being crypto-Buddhist by association.

It's obviously an academic thing and beyond my paygrade. But I like Alston's take. Gaudapada lived when Nagarjuna was in the air.

So he used this language to advance his Advaitic teaching. Shankara, on the other hand, lived when Buddhism in India had precipitously declined.

Shankara is the father of Advaita Vedanta as we know it. That Gaudapada is his self-proclaimed godfather is good enough for me. Academic questions are so full of sound and fury.