Looking at going to battlehack (from paypal) this weekend. Wondering how it fits in to the "3 types" from the article - doesn't seem to fit in to any of those 3 specifically.
I've been to many that don't fit into those. But I think it's because the title was 3 harmful types of hackathon. Not "the 3 types of hackathons. The ones you and I have been too were nothing like this and were simply not in the harmful category.
I went to BattleHack Austin two years ago (and then to the world finals in San Jose), and really enjoyed it.
I would say that it doesn't fit into any of those categories - it's not a business pitch-a-thon, PayPal doesn't own your code, and it's not a recruiting deal either. BattleHack is still the best hackathon I've ever been to.
They're doing the BattleHack hackathons to raise awareness of their developer programs with coders, for a company like PayPal, it's not a lot of money to spend.