I'd say tech culture is 100% fair game for Hacker News. In fact, it's been the subject of a fair number of front page articles recently (look at the Fowler stories, for instance). The flagging suggests to me that they didn't like what was being said, rather than they thought it was off-topic.
A good test for this that the moderators could run is to see if those that flagged this article flagged any other articles about LambdaConf's policies and if so, which.
Another one is to compare its performance to other, similarly political articles by the same author (e.g. his free software posts) and see how they performed.
A good test for this that the moderators could run is to see if those that flagged this article flagged any other articles about LambdaConf's policies and if so, which.
Another one is to compare its performance to other, similarly political articles by the same author (e.g. his free software posts) and see how they performed.