Anyone developing Salesforce apps will not raise a stink as it will hurt their relationship with that company. So anyone writing Kudos about Salesforce for this extra $1M prize should keep quiet as it's disingenuous. It's been mentioned many times over that many of the teams that competed could tell via analytics that their apps were not looked at. This statement alone should invalidate the entire contest and force new judging.<p>So how does this constitute a full review and audit. The reality is that SF royally fucked up on many fronts and lost developer cred in the community. As if they cared in the first place.<p>If they attempt this next year, they need to appoint an outside 3rd party to oversee the contest and git rid of their own employees from the process.
This doesn't square with several team's assertions that, according to their analytics, their videos had never been viewed by the judges. I wish they (saleforce) had addressed this issue in their response.
1. * Collect massive data set.<p>2. Build an API.<p>3. Make mobile application that 'uses' API to do something cool.<p>4. Judges think API/Data set are inherent properties of your app.<p>4. Profit.<p>* Optional. You could just make an API that does something cool way before hackathon.<p>(That is my understanding of what happened with that event and it is most likely inaccurate.)
The problem with Upshot's exemption of "they built the mobile app during the Hackathon so it's fair" is that it sets a bad precedent for all other Hackathons. Why shouldn't teams do what Upshot did and develop the cool tech beforehand and polish it during the Hackathon, especially when winning offers such prizes/publicity?
<p><pre><code> While the Upshot mobile app used some pre-existing code,
this did not violate the rules. Use of pre-existing code
was allowable as long as the code didn’t comprise the
majority of the app and didn’t violate any third party’s rights.
</code></pre>
IMHO, the whole idea of a hackathon is to see what teams can come up with on the spot. Any pre-existing code you bring is an unfair advantage. But if the rules say pre-coding is OK, then it is OK ;) disclaimer: I am not familiar with the specifics in this situation, just commenting on hackathons in general.
This was the only 'outcome' that was available to salesforce. If they took away UpShots prize money, they would have upset a lot of people who felt that prizes shouldn't be taken away after the fact, that upshot won by playing within the rules, etc. If they kept the ruling how it was, they still would upset a lot of people who felt cheated by upshot using existing code. Realistically they couldn't rejudge the entire competition, and even if they did there would be people complaining about that. They ran the hackathon poorly, they communicated poorly by posting certain things on the forums, etc, they judged it poorly, and now they just want out from under their own mess with the least damage possible<p>Salesforce had one out, throw money at the problem and hope it fades away.
"It also found that we weren’t clear enough with the final round judges about the use of pre-existing code"<p>because you were expecting the pre-determined winner to be using it?
I wonder what Upshot data code submission looked like? If they submitted just the mobile app, then all that Salesforce got out of it was a Webview + Mic integration, but if Salesforce actually got the NLP code (doubt it)...paying $1mil would have been worth all of this nonsense.<p>The right thing to do would be to ask Upshot to submit ALL their code and add it to Salesforce.com. I think most of the other participants would consider that fair justice.
I was contemplating some snide response that, regardless of how many apps are considered 'winners', Salesforce comes off as the loser due to bad publicity in the development community. Then I remembered they'd just been given source code and rights to a ton of pretty nifty apps for a bargain price.<p>Guess there are Three Winners.
lmao @ Salesforce's developer marketing dude's brilliant response to all of this: "Nuh-uh, it was fair and square, those guys are all totally lying."
> While the Upshot mobile app used some pre-existing code, this did not violate the rules. Use of pre-existing code was allowable as long as the code didn’t comprise the majority of the app and didn’t violate any third party’s rights. Our internal review determined that Upshot’s mobile app was created during the hackathon and met these criteria.<p>So what does "a majority" really mean? Can I come in with 49% of the code and still be eligible? 49% isn't technically a majority. What about 49.99%? How do you even determine the concept of "a majority"?
Wow, much more impressive response than their first one. Especially good move addressing the private gallery complaint, that's a small detail that shows they paid attention to some of the complaints at least.