I've witnessed this debate a few times now, and every time it is absolutely two groups of mostly-correct people arguing past each other about the definition of the problem. Half of them are assuming the runway is a treadmill going backwards, but otherwise the same, and the other half are assuming that something is physically preventing the plane from going forward (and, presumably, backward) while we run a treadmill beneath the plane and wait for it to take off. A much smaller group of people want the treadmill to run backwards fast enough to counteract the forward force of the engines, but this just involves destroying the plane or the treadmill so I tend to ignore it as an uninteresting problem.

Long, tedious, mostly-correct explanations of why the other side is wrong tend to follow.

Personally, I give the nod to the first group of people since the problem is never specified with anything holding the plane, and consequently that's an added entity not in the specification. However, you are free to frame the problem any way you choose, and it's perfectly valid to say there is such a thing. But you should be aware that you're not arguing the same thing as the other guy.

This one is unique among the "world-killing" problems I know, in that there is generally a right and a wrong side. In this case, both sides are usually fairly right, just talking past each other.

Which, IMHO, makes this a rather intensely boring HN debate, all ye in the other thread.

I think the intent of the problem is that it wants to show that an equal and opposite force is being applied to the engine, therefore no forward movement is applied.

The way it is worded however causes those who a reading word for word to conclude that there is less than equal force being applied (because 1:1 with the wheel motion is that) and therefore the aircraft moves forward.