Unless you have good reason to see any malice: assume there is none, because it'll be less stressful, and you're less likely to get into embarrassing self-defea

Unless you have good reason to see any malice: assume there is none, because it'll be less stressful, and you're less likely to get into embarrassing self-defeating arguments. The incentives make sense for commercial companies to participate to gain exposure, and the organizers probably don't mind if it boosts their attendance (although it can, as you've observed, reduce the sense of authenticity for some participants - even award-winners like yourselves). Choosing a project to sponsor with the winnings is a tricky question. What kind of properties would you look for in an honest, enabling open source project? (disclaimer / notice: I both work in the area of open source software, and have a (free and) open source project, and I wouldn't make any request for your money in either of those contexts -- I'm not indirectly fishing for anything) For some reason your comment made me think of the film "They Live" (very tongue-in-cheek) which you might enjoy, if you haven't seen it already.