cbk.. m8 damn...
I understand your furious reaction on PA-Team. I've experienced you in speedround, and you are damn good in finding ways around the system. Remember, exiling people in your galaxy, and let them join later. Or donate resources to 1 person, wait a tick so he is bigger in score. Donate it back to the fund, and donate the fund to a bigger player, to end #1. That's how you won the speedround finals as planet. Finding ways around the system.
On a personal note I say, way the go! I was scan/cov op planet this round. And intended to donate all to the gal fund, to be big at the end. I was very pissed, and even made a post on the boards when I saw the limit was 25mil. I checked the manual and it wasn't there, which made me even more pissed. I soon found out there was a way around it. The way you described. As i'm not playing to serious, I decided not to use this exploit of the system. Imho, a LEGAL exploit, both virtual and in RL there exist these exploits, and as long as it ain't covered by the rules, you shouldn't be punished for it. Imho, that counts for every exploit. The moment PA-Team knew about this exploit, the should make a clear post, let all players know it shouldn't be done. If you had done it afterwards, your account should be deleted within 2 seconds. But punishing people for an exploit, before it was taken into the manual is imho wrong. To bad
Since I think they don't overthink this dicision.
A totall other thing, if PA-Team didn't know after 1 week this exploit could have been used, they must have been blind. More used it. 1 quick post telling people the limit was 25mil, and people shouldn't donate more was nuff.
If it is a bug.. I'm programmer myself, and i gotta think about it. The design says, 25mil is the max of the fund. If the coder, codes it wrong, it's a failure of the coder, not of the code, since the code is working. But almost every "bug" is a failure of the coder not of the program itself. Therefor I would say "Yes", but since it wasn't covered in the rulez, should you be punished? NO!