What depresses me about it is that many people, probably even many of the authors colleagues and readers here, do not feel that he has any right to that money.

What depresses me about it is that many people, probably even many of the authors colleagues and readers here, do not feel that he has any right to that money. There are suggestions that even the author himself does not feel he has earned it. This is a pretty big philosophical problem, but it's very worrisome. At least in certain cultures, people are willing to take significant personal losses just to prevent someone else from "getting a windfall". There is even behavioral research about this tendency, the 'Ultimatum Game' research is pretty much centered around it. I agree with you entirely, he earned the $30k bounty and DJI is both morally and, one would hope, legally culpable in trying to defraud him of $30k. While it sounds like a great deal of money for "not much work" (we are, I suppose, to take the extensive education and experience utilized as something that appears from the ether and one is simply anointed with, unearned), it is really a paltry sum when considered reasonably. How much money has DJI saved by not hiring staff capable of building the system correctly in the first place? How much money would DJI make from retaining the lucrative clients that will hopefully drop them like a hot potato when they learn of this bungled exposure of just how little they care about security? (I am guessing that those .gov clients and any similar will be hearing from their engineers and getting this document passed up the chain soon. And I don't know about DJI specifically but at least in the US most companies rely upon the government as their largest customer.) $30k for the work performed, and the consequences if handled only as honestly as a child on a playground who makes a promise and feels bound by it, is a stupendously tiny amount of money. And yet, DJI is so shortsighted, mean, and cheap that they're not even capable of honoring the agreements they freely made of their own accord. Do you think anyone at DJI simply thought that their systems were secure and no significant bugs would be found? If so... what are those people thinking now?