> When I write code that nobody is paying for, you better believe I’ll write it how I damn well please.
You're under no obligation to write code. You are under an obligation not to sneak an advert into someone else's conference via essentially fraudulent means.
Just because nobody is paying you, doesn't mean you have carte blanche to do whatever you want.
I dont think this is a controversial opinion. If someone created a piece of open source software but hid a trojan or cryptominer in it people would find it objectionable. You could quibble about where the line is, but i think everyone agrees that just because something is free does not give you the absolute right to do whatever you want.
Its not an ad. It was a request for donations to a company that put themselves out to the tune of $100k to make the badges happen. And then had credit and publicity stripped from them during defcon - even though that was part of the deal! Apparently they aren't even mentioned in the program, and their company logo was taken off the cases for the badges.
We aren't talking about client work here. We're talking about defcon, where cheekily thumbing your nose at authority through code is the heart and soul of the conference. This single, hidden page asking for donations on behalf of the hardware company is a total nothingburger. Getting up in arms about it for being unprofessional is ridiculous.
> We're talking about defcon, where cheekily thumbing your nose at authority through code is the heart and soul of the conference. This single, hidden page asking for donations on behalf of the hardware company is a total nothingburger. Getting up in arms about it for being unprofessional is ridiculous.
People in this thread do seem to be very upset about a hacker doing hacker things. For a bit more irony, we're on Hacker News...
You're under no obligation to write code. You are under an obligation not to sneak an advert into someone else's conference via essentially fraudulent means.
Just because nobody is paying you, doesn't mean you have carte blanche to do whatever you want.
I dont think this is a controversial opinion. If someone created a piece of open source software but hid a trojan or cryptominer in it people would find it objectionable. You could quibble about where the line is, but i think everyone agrees that just because something is free does not give you the absolute right to do whatever you want.