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Comment by bencoder | Hacker News Reader

Was about to apply but I'm confused about the rules requiring all members to be the same nationality.

I have a French passport, so my nationality would legally be French, but I live in the UK, and work with English, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian developers(all living and working in the UK), some of whom I was considering asking to join a team with me. I think this rule needs some amendment.

Edit: also to explain some more, my French passport is a consequence of some awkward laws - I was born in the UK and have lived here all my life and can't even speak the language of my legal nationality. If I happened to win I wouldn't like to be a representative of "France" and I really dislike this "Passport must match" for the team - it makes no sense.

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Rules changed. Teams choose which country they represent, and one member needs to be a citizen of this country, but others can be from anywhere. Yay!

Thank you!

Yeah, I have a Turkish passport and I live in Germany with a residence permit. I joined with two German colleagues, hoping that would be OK.

(Disclaimer: I'm not part of the organizing team, but I do work for Reaktor - so this is just my opinion, not an official position.) As I've understood, the same country requirement works just like in sports: you need to be a citizen of the country if you want to play in the national team.

I would suggest contacting the organizers about your situation.

I think what people are trying to point out is that within the hacker community the concept of a "national team" is obsolete.

> you need to be a citizen of the country if you want to play in the national team.

Citizenship and Nationality are two distinct concepts. I am a citizen of the UK, but I do not have UK/English Nationality

I think that comparison is flawed as there's only one team per country (and discipline) sent to e.g. the Soccer World Cup or the Olympic Games, whereas here it could be potentially way more. As a sibling already mentioned: there shouldn't be any artificial borders in a global (hacker) community.

It would be a shame if they disqualified me/us. I'm in this for fun. I guess everyone is. If I can travel freely in Europe and have no problems being in a "German" team, I think there mustn't be any problems.

I agree. The main point of this competition is fun - having beta tested the system I can promise that writing bots and watching them compete is a lot of fun. I hope your team can participate.

They actually changed the rules! Now I'm even more motivated.

I have a Danish passport, but have lived in Norway my whole life. Would have liked to join with some of my friends, well, well...

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