[TeMPOraL]

The difference is that tptacek won't claim that he's doing it because he cares about your software; he will say he's doing it to earn money. He will definitely try to do it well to maintain his opinion of a professional, but he won't be pretending he does something altruistic.

I'm not saying doing things for money is inherently bad. I'm just saying, let's call things what they are.

[dllthomas]

I still don't see where the claim of altruism comes in. We're labelling things for their effects. Matasano secures your software in exchange for dollars. I'm currently making software respond quickly to network events in exchange for dollars. The sandwich vendor makes me a sandwich in exchange for dollars. Calling us all "dollar miners", simply because we're doing it mostly for the dollars, is not really "calling things what they are" - it's a horrendously lossy focus on one particular aspect of "what they are".

[TeMPOraL]

I think I got the wrong sentiment from baddox's post and have been arguing against the "claim of altruism" that wasn't really made by anyone. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8244741.

[dllthomas]

It was thedaveoflife who made explicit his understanding that a label of "transaction security auditing" implied altruism. He's not really answered queries as to how that's the case.