Carmack accused of stealing Oculus Rift tech

What if he didnt steal the code and just re-wrote it since he was the one who coded it in the first place, and it was fresh on his mind, the guy is a fucking genius, I wouldn't be surprised he has an amazing memory for this kind of shit. These kinds of lawsuits have so many loopholes. Zenimax will lose, and theyll lose even harder since it's facebook involved.

I find the HTC Vive to be a lot more impressive than the Occulus Rift, IMHO.

We have both of them at my job.

Bumping, as the lawsuit will move forward with new court orders.

I'm here to defend the concept of a business owning my extra-curricular production too. how dare you separate your life from your job you fucking drone

yakfak said:

I'm here to defend the concept of a business owning my extra-curricular production too. how dare you separate your life from your job you fucking drone

The problem is Carmack did the stuff at his job, on company hours, using his @idsoftware.com email address. Or so the material released in the original filing would lead us to believe. When you do that, anything you produce is the company's property automatically.

Quasar said:

The problem is Carmack did the stuff at his job, on company hours, using his @idsoftware.com email address. Or so the material released in the original filing would lead us to believe. When you do that, anything you produce is the company's property automatically.

Even if all of that were true (he would have had to sign an agreement, I would think, though don't quote me), this case is a bit different. First, Carmack was the company - he founded it, and made all the technology that Zenimax scooped up with a big check. No one ever dictated hours or work schedules to Carmack, and he's always worked on whatever the hell he wanted to work on - for 25 years. He's not an hourly employee - this is not some 20-year old junior programmer you hired to whip up some inventory spreadsheets. My guess is that he never signed any contract dictating how he would work, or what he would do. He wrote his rendering engines without anyone having to ask, which was his commitment. So what if he wrote some code on a company computer, his home computer, or on a company napkin - hell, I work on side projects at work occasionally, when I have some free time (never), and I'll be damned if my employer will own any of my side projects. Yikes.

I doubt very much that Carmack would sign anything restricting his rights to write code. A company would be lucky to have him around, and would not dare throw a non-compete agreement, or anything of the sort at him. Everytime I got one of those, I changed it before I signed it, to specify that only work-related work was owned by the company. Otherwise, those contracts would let your employer own the dog house you built in your backyard, the car you put a starter in, the ham and cheese sandwich you made during lunch.

They're just pissed because he left, and are greedy for some more free money, like they got by buying idSoftware. That's my take, anyway.

This pisses me off, cause it's a big company screwing with the success of the little guy. Sure, he's pretty well off, but this is a single man's dream, and his employment, and it benefits no one to hold him down. Companies are always pulling this shit, and everyone suffers as a result. Losers.

If I draw porn on company time, does the company now own pornography?

Clonehunter said:

If I draw porn on company time, does the company now own pornography?

If your contract says so, yes they do.

If you want to be your own boss then don't sell your company to Zenimax. Just sayin'

I hope he wins because he opensourced his engines! He is a hero.

kb1 said:

First, Carmack was the company

Indeed - he WAS the company, then he sold out. After that he was an employee.

kb1 said:

My guess is that he never signed any contract dictating how he would work, or what he would do.

Why in the world would you assume that?

28. At the time of its acquisition of id Software, ZeniMax entered into employment agreements with several of id Software’s key employees, including Carmack. Carmack was one of id Software’s founders and served as its Technical Director.

29. In his employment agreement with ZeniMax, Carmack agreed to disclose to ZeniMax inventions relating to the company’s current or anticipated research and development that Carmack created during the term of his employment, and further agreed that all such inventions would be the sole and exclusive property of ZeniMax. Carmack also agreed that ZeniMax would also be the author and owner of any copyrightable works that he prepared within the scope of his employment

All of those employees had access to ZeniMax confidential information and trade secrets, and all were subject to strict post-employment confidentiality and non-solicitation obligations, as was Carmack.

Linguica said:

Indeed - he WAS the company, then he sold out. After that he was an employee.
Why in the world would you assume that?

Cause Masters of Doom. Cause "If you try to make me copyright my work, I'll quit." Cause of his stance on free software. I figured he sold the company to let them do the "biz stuff", so he could simply code. I can't believe he agreed to sign that kind of stuff - He certainly didn't have to. I guess you're right - he sold out :(

Where did your info come from? (I believe you, just curious to read it.) Oh well, nothing lasts, does it?

EDIT: One more thing: The programmers, map authors and artists are who makes the resources that make companies and Zenimax money. Zenimax themselves contribute very little to that process - money, and advertising, same as if they were selling toe jam cream.

Now, there's nothing wrong with a company making money. But, I mean, it's not like the components of a VR headset are some secret. Is Zenimax even building hardware?

Edward850 said:

If your contract says so, yes they do.

Honestly this gives me an idea.

kb1 said:

EDIT: One more thing: The programmers, map authors and artists are who makes the resources that make companies and Zenimax money. Zenimax themselves contribute very little to that process - money, and advertising, same as if they were selling toe jam cream.

Except for the remarkably crucial component that Zenimax provide; Paying their programmers, modelers and artists their requested wages and providing them with the equipment and licensing necessary for their craft. You are being paid upwards to $30 an hour, 40 hours a week, on their company time and resources to make games and technology.

If you don't agree that the company own what you make them, then you can just not make it for them under the contract you signed with them, and they in turn don't need to pay you. You also find that if you aren't being paid and aren't doing anything for that company, you don't actually have a job.

kb1 said:

Cause Masters of Doom. Cause "If you try to make me copyright my work, I'll quit." Cause of his stance on free software.

That quote is wrong. He was talking about patents, not copyright. The two are entirely different.

Reminder that copyrights are automatic. You can't "make" someone copyright their work; their work is copyrighted automatically.
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/copyright-automatic.html

There are mechanisms to register your copyright, but they're not necessary. It's there to offer ways to prove that your creation is really your creation, not to prove that it's really copyrighted.
https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-automatic-copyright-protection-3514945

Right. This is the actual quote from Masters of Doom:

Al had never seen a side scrolling like this for the PC. “Wow,” he told Carmack, “you should patent this technology.”

Carmack turned red. “If you ever ask me to patent anything,” he snapped, “I’ll quit.” Al assumed Carmack was trying to protect his own financial interests, but in reality he had struck what was an increasingly raw nerve for the young, idealistic programmer. It was one of the few things that could truly make him angry. It was ingrained in his bones since his first reading of the Hacker Ethic.

All of science and technology and culture and learning and academics is built upon using the work that others have done before, Carmack thought. But to take a patenting approach and say it’s like, well, this idea is my idea, you cannot extend this idea in any way, because I own this idea — it just seems so fundamentally wrong. Patents were jeopardizing the very thing that was central to his life: writing code to solve problems. If the world became a place in which he couldn’t solve a problem without infringing on someone’s patents, he would be very unhappy living there.

Edward850 said:

Except for the remarkably crucial component that Zenimax provide; Paying their programmers, modelers and artists their requested wages and providing them with the equipment and licensing necessary for their craft. You are being paid upwards to $30 an hour, 40 hours a week, on their company time and resources to make games and technology.

If you don't agree that the company own what you make them, then you can just not make it for them under the contract you signed with them, and they in turn don't need to pay you. You also find that if you aren't being paid and aren't doing anything for that company, you don't actually have a job.

Come on, man - that's not what I said, not even close.

fraggle said:

Right. This is the actual quote from Masters of Doom:

Yep, I did the 'quote' from memory. But, doesn't the real quote show Carmack being against the locking up of technology - against holding people back from improving on known ideas? That's in the same spirit of what I described. This is why I'm surprised that Carmack signed that paper.

Besides all that, what's so novel about taking a gyroscope, 2 monitors, and 2 speakers, and mounting them into a headset? Hell, I was taking 2 toilet paper rolls, and looking at my TRS-80 monitor through them when I was 10. Can I sue Zenimax? It's ridiculous. Jeez.

I wonder if Zenimax would have sued John Carmack even if he didn't use job time for Oculus. Even if he worked on it daily after exiting office.

printz said:

I wonder if Zenimax would have sued John Carmack even if he didn't use job time for Oculus. Even if he worked on it daily after exiting office.

Don't companies own all the work you do as long as you work at them?

DooM_RO said:

Don't companies own all the work you do as long as you work at them?

No, they only own what is agreed upon in the contract that you sign. This certainly includes anything you do on location on company hours with company equipment.

my job has the same rule. if you guys want I can find the exact wording on it and post it.

kb1 said:

Yep, I did the 'quote' from memory. But, doesn't the real quote show Carmack being against the locking up of technology - against holding people back from improving on known ideas? That's in the same spirit of what I described. This is why I'm surprised that Carmack signed that paper.

Besides all that, what's so novel about taking a gyroscope, 2 monitors, and 2 speakers, and mounting them into a headset? Hell, I was taking 2 toilet paper rolls, and looking at my TRS-80 monitor through them when I was 10. Can I sue Zenimax? It's ridiculous. Jeez.

Wtf, why is the goalpost over there? I swear it was standing right here just moments ago! What is this, black magic?

dew said:

Wtf, why is the goalpost over there? I swear it was standing right here just moments ago! What is this, black magic?

Huh? You lost me, dew. Is it a comment about the quality of VR tech? That's my best guess. Yes, getting VR right is difficult: Getting the viw in focus for every viewer, keeping both screens (and audio) in sync, and at a high frame rate. And you want a super-fast response time on the gyro, to avoid a rubber-band feeling. And, of course, the software must present a sharp, believable world, with accurate 3D perspective.

I suppose that's where some patents/copyright could apply - in the details. Still, it's not a novel idea, and I'm with Carmack on this one.

kb1 said:

Huh? You lost me, dew.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

Moving the goalposts, similar to "shifting sands" and also known as raising the bar, is an informal fallacy in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded. That is, after an attempt has been made to score a goal, the goalposts are moved to exclude the attempt. The problem with changing the rules of the game is that the meaning of the end result is changed, too.

Edward850 said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

Ah, that makes sense - thanks Edward850. No real info from dew, just more noise. Thanks for that, dew.

dew said:

Wtf, why is the goalpost over there? I swear it was standing right here just moments ago! What is this, black magic?

My views didn't change - I was simply able to provide more detail about my thoughts, and refine my message. Does everything that you say/type come out exactly as you meant, and in a way that everyone that read can completely understand? With hyper-critical people like you, posting substance-less criticisms, it's a wonder anyone can get their message out, without studying it like it's a term paper. Instead, you got my honest, raw response the first time, which is not worth much, but it was truthful. What is your post worth?

Your views did not change, but the goal you're arguing towards sure as hell did after you got proven wrong.

dew said:

Your views did not change, but the goal you're arguing towards sure as hell did after you got proven wrong.

How did I get proven wrong? That Carmack would sign such a contract? Yep I was wrong. What is this goal you speak of? And what changed? Enlighten me with your wisdom.

To understand Carmack's attitude towards intellectual property, you need to consider the larger context of the free software / open source movement. That movement consists of two quite different ideological factions.

One faction is represented by Richard Stallman, and is rooted in socialist thinking and attitudes. It is a developed ideology that holds that proprietary software is intrinsically immoral and oppressive, and that all source code should always be freely available to use and modify. E.g. you should not have a choice whether to release your code or not, because the societal benefit of sharing code is more important than your personal desire to control it or profit from it.

The other faction, represented best perhaps by Linus Torvalds, is rooted in libertarian thinking and attitudes. It is less of a developed ideology and more of an ethos based on ad-hoc, consensual sharing and a mutual distrust of authority. Here the emphasis is not on a moral obligation to distribute code, but on freeing the individual from the restrictions imposed by ubiquitous proprietary operating systems, software patents, DRM, and IP laws like the DMCA that are seen to go too far beyond protecting one party's rights into unfairly restricting another's.

Carmack seems to be much closer to latter, libertarian side of the equation. After all, he's spent his whole career making and selling proprietary software, so he obviously has no moral objection to it. His opposition to software patents seems to be a reflexive disgust at the idea that he could independently develop a solution to a problem and then be told he can't use it because somebody else thought of it first.

Also, Carmack's general attitude towards law and politics seems to have a disdainful bent, one often found amongst hyper-focused engineers, which might go someway to explaining why someone of his intelligence would be so careless in how he handled the IP situation with respect to Id, Zenimax and Oculus. He views such things as a tedious nuisance and an unwelcome distraction from his real interests, and so makes a conscious effort to avoid engaging with them as much as possible. He bases his actions on an instinctive idea of fairness, wherein his personal freedom to act, and to use and reuse his own ideas, is sacrosanct.

Jonathan said:

To understand Carmack's attitude towards intellectual property, you need to consider the larger context of the free software / open source movement. That movement consists of two quite different ideological factions.

One faction is represented by Richard Stallman, and is rooted in socialist thinking and attitudes. It is a developed ideology that holds that proprietary software is intrinsically immoral and oppressive, and that all source code should always be freely available to use and modify. E.g. you should not have a choice whether to release your code or not, because the societal benefit of sharing code is more important than your personal desire to control it or profit from it.

The other faction, represented best perhaps by Linus Torvalds, is rooted in libertarian thinking and attitudes. It is less of a developed ideology and more of an ethos based on ad-hoc, consensual sharing and a mutual distrust of authority. Here the emphasis is not on a moral obligation to distribute code, but on freeing the individual from the restrictions imposed by ubiquitous proprietary operating systems, software patents, DRM, and IP laws like the DMCA that are seen to go too far beyond protecting one party's rights into unfairly restricting another's.

Carmack seems to be much closer to latter, libertarian side of the equation. After all, he's spent his whole career making and selling proprietary software, so he obviously has no moral objection to it. His opposition to software patents seems to be a reflexive disgust at the idea that he could independently develop a solution to a problem and then be told he can't use it because somebody else thought of it first.

Also, Carmack's general attitude towards law and politics seems to have a disdainful bent, one often found amongst hyper-focused engineers, which might go someway to explaining why someone of his intelligence would be so careless in how he handled the IP situation with respect to Id, Zenimax and Oculus. He views such things as a tedious nuisance and an unwelcome distraction from his real interests, and so makes a conscious effort to avoid engaging with them as much as possible. He bases his actions on an instinctive idea of fairness, wherein his personal freedom to act, and to use and reuse his own ideas, is sacrosanct.

This is a well worded response, and if I had to bet, I would guess that your conclusions were spot on - that's probably exactly what happened. What a shame. Thanks for such a beautifully written, thoughtful response - I can't imagine putting my thoughts into text so accurately.

I would learn towards the libertarian view, myself. Coding is DIFFICULT and is a rightful art form in of itself (even if some people don't consider it art).

If you can't benefit or profit from problem solving, what is even the point? If we all go towards Stallman's attitudes towards it, there's no real motivation to learn coding in the first place, and if anything that will kill coding in general.

Coding is a real skill that takes time to master - just like wood carving, just like being a soldier, just like using Photoshop and/or AfterEffects. If a person can't make a profit from it - it becomes a hobby for everyone, and as a result everyone loses.