<story><title>Entropic Engineering DEFCON 32 Statement</title><url>https://www.entropicengineering.com/defcon-32-statement</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>krisoft</author><text>As per usual nobody comes out of these things looking good.&lt;p&gt;To really understand who is right and who is wrong here we would need to read the letter of the agreements between these  entities, and cross reference them with facts. Of course neither the contracts, nor the facts are available to us.&lt;p&gt;As is, the best I can do here is to put all participants on my personal “do not work with” list. Who needs the drama.&lt;p&gt;In particular there seems to be at least two points of miscommunication: it sounds like EE were told how much DEFCON can spend per badge. And they took that number to mean only the cost of the board and electrical engineering costs associated with it. Ignoring other costs (lanyard for sure, and maybe the cost of the plastic case too?).&lt;p&gt;The other missed connection seems to be the legal position of the firmware developer. EE seems to say they thought the guy was not their subcontractor but someone working for DEFCON. While DEFCON seems to imply that they thought he was an EE subcontractor.&lt;p&gt;I see a lot comments here with strong opinions on who is right and who is wrong in this dispute. It also seems to be that those strong opinions are based on assumptions. In particular assumptions about what the contract might say, but treated as if it is not a speculation but the truth. That logic is not persuasive to me.</text></comment>
<story><title>Entropic Engineering DEFCON 32 Statement</title><url>https://www.entropicengineering.com/defcon-32-statement</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Aurornis</author><text>DEFCON’s response was posted on Reddit: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;Defcon&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;NVw5T4LXQR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;Defcon&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;NVw5T4LXQR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unsurprisingly, it contradicts some of the claims Entropic has been making. Entropic admits to having exceeded agreed upon budgets by a significant amount, which DEFCON corroborates. There is some disagreement about what has been paid, though, as DEFCON believes they have paid for the hardware development.&lt;p&gt;Some of the other claims also appear to have been exaggerated or at least phrased in misleading ways. The Entropic Engineering logo was not removed from the PCBs. Their logo was not included on the plastics because Entropic was not responsible for the plastics and the initial plan to include their logo was only a courtesy before the relationship soured. The DEFCON statement alludes to budgets being exceeded by a significant margin (not covered by minor reductions in hourly rate as the other statement implied) and even calls out some “bad-faith” charges.&lt;p&gt;I’m also confused about the earlier threats to use the DMCA against DEFCON for using the firmware without a license. As far as I can tell, the firmware was produced as part of the agreement between DEFCON and Entropic, in which case there shouldn’t be much question about the license as it’s a work for hire. Imagine hiring a company to write software to your spec and then to have them later try to claim they’re going to pursue legal action for using the software you paid them to write. Something is strange here.&lt;p&gt;It also appears that the firmware engineer’s dismissal from the talk was communicated before it began, so his choice to get on stage anyway knowingly violated that decision. Regardless of what we think should have happened, getting up on stage after being told not to isn’t going to go well at any conference for any reason.&lt;p&gt;I think there’s a lot more to this story than the initial round of accusations let on. I think the first movers in publishing their narrative often win the public opinion debate, but if even half of what DEFCON is saying is true then Entropic and their team don’t appear to be operating entirely in good faith with the way they’ve handled this publicity.</text></comment>