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I was not at the conference and have no first hand knowledge of what happened. But before everyone gets on their high horse, please pause to reflect: This was
by rsj_hn 9y ago
I was not at the conference and have no first hand knowledge of what happened.
But before everyone gets on their high horse, please pause to reflect:
This was all company work product being presented by company employees who were on a company funded conference trip. Therefore there is an approval process for vetting presentations as well as a legal process for opensourcing code. This is standard practice at all companies.
Now what do you think is more likely: That the PR department would approve of a talk titled "meatpistol" (FIXED) (have you seen the slides?) and the legal dept would approve of open sourcing the code and then at the very last minute both groups would change their mind and try to pull the talk, or that the presenters never got the OK in the first place, the company found out at the last minute, asked them to pull the talk and they refused?
How likely is it that they would get official approval for their talk under a "Chatham's rules" meeting in February to for a presentation <strike>in August</strike>at the end of July? Isn't it more likely that they got some initial approval for a talk in February, but that PR still wanted to vet the actual slides in <strike>August</strike>July? (I'm assuming that the slides were made after February.) Which PR department gives approvals like that? What legal department works this way? In my experience, stuff like this happens at the last minute, because that's when you're finishing your slides (as well as your code), and generally PR is going to ask that you make some changes to your slides and they will want the final copy before signing off. Now maybe I'm wrong and the article is correct, but I think it's unlikely.
Moreover given that Salesforce can't talk about this matter, who do you think is the source for the article and whose side are you hearing?
The last few days have really highlighted how quick people are to pile on with outrage and self-righteous indignation before getting all the facts.
- Mithaldu 9y agopuppet is not mentioned once in the article. It's called MEATPISTOL, which is a obviously a codename. Also this is Defcon.
- rsj_hn 9y agoYou're right, fixed. Of course it was defcon -- where did I say it was something else?
- lobotryas 9y agoApparently the fired employees have enough of a case that the EFF agreed to represent them. Given that SF employees have presented at many conferences in the past I don't see that getting official approval for the presentation is that strange. I agree that we need more details, but can you really say that this situation has not played out many times before?
- rsj_hn 9y ago>Given that SF employees have presented at many conferences in the past I don't see that getting official approval for the presentation is that strange. It's not strange at all. So dig up some of those slide decks of past SF talks and compare them to what was presented in the meatpistol talk. Then you can decide for yourself whether you think this talk was approved or not -- it would be the same PR department approving all the talks, right?. In any case, the facts may come out in the representation, as you suggest.
- ghaff 9y agoI have no idea about SF's processes specifically but it's certainly not universal practice to have conference presentations signed off by PR or anyone else within an organization. Doesn't mean there can't be repercussions if you say something inappropriate or disclose information you shouldn't, but not all companies require signoff from presentations.
- xorbyte 9y agoAny comparatively large corporation very likely has a release process for these sorts of things where a bunch of groups (like PR, maybe Legal etc) would take a look. Releasing company IP as open source outside of such a process would be a gross violation of any number of non-disclosure agreements between employer and employee.
- arcticfox 9y agoI'm a little confused what their case is, can't the company fire them at any time with no reason? I don't really know much about employment law, but that was my understanding. Like if they went on stage and flopped, they could get fired. Similarly maybe they were too good. Or the boss was having a bad day.
- dpkonofa 9y agoI think you're exactly right here. The article leaves off too many details and speculates entirely too much for me to feel comfortable making any kind of assessment and I think that this is exactly what they want. We haven't heard any official statements from EFF, Salesforce, or anyone besides anonymous sources. That kind of deliberate omission usually means that there's more to the story than we're led to believe and they need to get their side out there immediately to drudge up quick support and a clickbait headline to put in people's heads. There's still a chance that it's exactly what they said, but I find that hard to believe at this stage.
- defcontalks 9y agoDuring the talk they told us why they called it meat pistol.. it's an anagram for metasploit. Meat Pistol made sense because it shoots out malware implants. Also why pull out in the last 30 mins? And why fire them? No warnings ? Mistakes happen, you don't fire a director for something like that. The PR process is to make sure the company's image looks good, who better knows the Defcon audience? Hackers or PR people who don't understand the framework? There is really no other way to see it than Salesforce fucked up.
- rsj_hn 9y ago>During the talk they told us why they called it meat pistol.. it's an anagram for metasploit. Meat Pistol made sense because it shoots out malware implants. OK, try getting a PR department to sign off on that.
- defcontalks 9y agoThe whole point is that they already knew about it before hand(It being called meatpistol, hence the previous meeting) so firing them 30 mins prior is bullshit, hence the drama. And they presented it at Hushcon before with approval so what's the problem with that?
- Hasknewbie 9y ago>> The last few days have really highlighted how quick people are to pile on with outrage and self-righteous indignation before getting all the facts. Amen.
- simonh 9y agoThe facts are the exec that hired them was an attendee at the conference. He must have known perfectly well what they were going to present well in advance. So the facts are that prior authorisation doesn't look like it could possibly be the issue.
- jasonlotito 9y agoWhich is more likely? That someone wanted this cancelled in the last 30 minutes. As you said, this was a company funded trip. There is no way this wasn't known. Multiple people were on the trip that knew of the talk well before it started. And if you knew something was going to be released that shouldn't be released, why wouldn't you go to the place where the talk was being held and stop it? Especially without confirmation.
- danek 9y agoLet's say this talk was never approved by PR and the employees went rogue. Firing someone in public right after they give a talk is still terrible optics. Even if salesforce is in the right, this executive looks totally incompetent, which in turn reflects poorly on the company. Unless it was an extended salesforce trash talk, that is.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- simonh 9y agoSo your. Intention is that they have this talk without the exec knowing it was going to happen? The exec that fired them was an attendee at the conference. How can he not have known about their talk? That makes no sense.