Salesforce responds to hackathon controversy by awarding $1M to the runner-up

Salesforce is a responding to the controversy over its hackathon like an absent parent: by showering the runner-up team with cash prizes.

Last week, the cloud computing firm came under attack from developers, who claimed that the hackathon was rigged. The prize for the winning team was $1 million, the largest sum ever awarded in a hackathon.

 Salesforce's vice president of developer relations Adam Seligman explains it in a blog post he wrote Monday: 

We heard feedback loud and clear from the developer community on the Salesforce1 Hackathon we ran at Dreamforce. We take feedback seriously and, as a result, our internal audit team conducted a comprehensive review of the eligibility requirements and judging process. We want to discuss all of the issues transparently, explain how we made some key decisions, and share the results of the review.

The internal review found that the winning team, Upshot, met the hackathon's eligibility requirements, and that the app they submitted adhered to the rules of the hackathon. It also found that we weren't clear enough with the final round judges about the use of pre-existing code.

So here's what we're going to do: we are declaring a tie and we are awarding each of the top two developer teams with the grand prize of $1 million. Both Upshot and Healthcare.love built incredible apps on the Salesforce1 Platform and both deserve to be recognized.

Thomas Kim, one of the engineers behind the winning submission, Upshot, appears to have demoed the app on Oct. 8 at a Salesforce meetup. But the hackathon rules state that teams can start work on their apps on Oct. 25. On community forums like Reddit and Hacker News, developers said Upshot appeared far too polished given the time constraints. Commenters also pointed out that Kim previously worked at Salesforce, which may have given him an unfair advantage.
Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s chief executive and a longtime programmer, tweeted his assurances that the company would look into the matter. Salesforce issued an apology post earlier today, explaining that they “weren’t clear enough with the final round judges about the use of pre-existing code.” Developer relations evangelist Adam Seligman also emailed participants in the hackathon, admitting that they should have been more transparent about the rules.

The Salesforce1 Hackathon was hosted at Dreamforce, and more than 4,500 developers registered to build mobile applications on Salesforce’s platform.