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I find it peculiar about people's continued good feelings towards Carmack. During the Zenimax/Oculus case: He claimed that he never wiped his hard drive: An i
by swang 9y ago
I find it peculiar about people's continued good feelings towards Carmack.
During the Zenimax/Oculus case:
He claimed that he never wiped his hard drive: An independent court expert found that most of his hard drive was wiped after Carmack heard about the lawsuit. So Carmack lied in his affidavit.
He claimed that no source code from Zenimax ever got transferred over to Oculus. Then later admitted that the emails he had taken form his Zenimax laptop on his last day there did contain source code. He denies that the source code in the emails benefitted him and that he "rewrote" all the code anyways. But this runs counter to the testimony of Oculus programmers who admitted they copied Zenimax code straight into the Oculus SDK.
He also has not outright denied the copy claims from the testimony of David Dobkin's in which Dobkin testified about the similarity between the source code in Zenimax and the source code in Oculus's SDK. Carmack instead accuses him of doing it for money and argued that the methodology wasn't very robust. But no denial, just ad hominem attacks.
So why do people still fawn over him when it seems like his ethics are dubious?
(Granted it could be possible that the technical aspects of the case went over the heads of jurors. And I will admit to being wrong if the Oculus appeal ends up revealing more information.
But his HD was discovered to be wiped, and even Oculus programmers admitted to copying code. Why does he get a free pass on this?)
- unixhero 9y ago>Why does he get a free pass on this?) Why should I care? The guy is an absolute legend.
- hobofan 9y agoAh yes, the good old social structure that is sustained by people being "absolute legends".
- hackerman12345 9y agoWell, people with #timesup and #metoo lapel pins did just vote up Kobe Bryant to win an Oscar.
- usrusr 9y agoWhy is that surprising? The idea of not owning the code you wrote isn't exactly cherished in hacker culture. People may half-heartedly accept that what he did was wrong, but they will be far from feeling outraged about it.
- purple-again 9y agoHe doesn't. He is in the wrong. I just don't care. I'm in the wrong every time I pack a bowl of weed. Still don't care. I understand why John doesn't own the fruit of his labor. I understand why John is willing to lie, cheat, and steal the people benefiting from the system that takes the fruit of his labor from him. If you don't like it, build a better system that prevents it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- balls187 9y ago> I'm in the wrong every time I pack a bowl of weed. Just come to seattle. Also, it's a false equivalency, stealing IP is far more sinister than smoking weed.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> So why do people still fawn over him when it seems like his ethics are dubious? > Why does he get a free pass on this? Because many people draw a distinction between something being "unethical" vs being "illegal". What exactly do you think is the problem with his ethics? How serious do you think it is?
- Jare 9y agoIt's often a mistake to infer someone's ethics from their apparent behaviour within the context of a legal battle. The consequences from even very minor details slipped or misinterpreted can be huge.
- edanm 9y agoI don't know anything, at all, about this case or much about him except the standard. But is there any point in bringing it up now? I mean, whether or not he did something illegal/unethical, does this now mean that literally every single time he writes something, someone feels the need to chime in with "but remember that bad thing he did once?". I'm not saying this isn't a legit conversation or that you're unethical or something for bringing it up... I just really think this isn't the time or place for this.
- sanxiyn 9y agoI agree with you, but I also think there is some kind of double standard going on, say, compared with the case of Jacob Appelbaum, etc.
- lazyasciiart 9y agoIt's not a 'double standard' to treat different situations differently. If you personally want to consider sexual assault and IP theft as the same situation, then you can, but IMO (and I believe in the average worldview) sexual assault is worse.
- fauigerzigerk 9y agoI agree. The guy had a quarrel with someone over something. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was right. Maybe it's just not that simple. I don't see the importance of it one way or another. But this seems to be a trend right now. Our tolerance for any sort of moral ambiguity or uncertainty has sunk to such low levels that we can no longer appreciate someone's work or insight without establishing that this person is flawless in every respect.
- panic 9y agoYeah, Carmack has a history of unethical behavior. From the book "Masters of Doom": > Late one night Carmack and his friends snuck up to a nearby school where they knew there were Apple II machines. Carmack had read about how a thermite paste could be used to melt through glass, but he needed some kind of adhesive material, like Vaseline. He mixed the concoction and applied it to the window, dissolving the glass so they could pop out holes to crawl through. A fat friend, however, had more than a little trouble squeezing inside; he reached through the hole instead and opened the window to let himself in. Doing so, he triggered the silent alarm. The cops came in no time. > The fourteen-year-old Carmack was sent for psychiatric evaluation to help determine his sentence. He came into the room with a sizable chip on his shoulder. The interview didn’t go well. Carmack was later told the contents of his evaluation: “Boy behaves like a walking brain with legs ... no empathy for other human beings.” At one point the man twiddled his pencil and asked Carmack, “If you hadn’t been caught, do you think you would have done something like this again?” > “If I hadn’t been caught,” Carmack replied honestly, “yes, I probably would have done that again.” > Later he ran into the psychiatrist, who told him, “You know, it’s not very smart to tell someone you’re going to go do a crime again.” > “I said, ‘if I hadn’t been caught,’ goddamn it!” Carmack replied. He was sentenced to one year in a small juvenile detention home in town. Most of the kids were in for drugs. Carmack was in for an Apple II.
- mgkimsal 9y agowell... damnit, it is frustrating when people ask you something then infer something different from a question they think they asked, vs what they asked! :/
- bitwize 9y agoCarmack: Breaks into a building at age 14, steals a bit of code today. "Oh, he has a history of unethical behavior, we shouldn't look up to him." Bill Gates: Steals a bulldozer to race with his buddies at age 19(?), is responsible for Microsoft's corporate culture and history of predatory behavior. Hackernews loves him and can't get enough of Microsoft. Boy, they're a fair sight better than Google, eh lads? I pity the person who learns ethics from Hackernews.
- z3phyr 9y agoHow does this comment critique the posted write up? People fawn over John because he shows a great spirit of the hacker. A hacker should be judged by his/her hacking.
- sanxiyn 9y agoI 100% agree that hackers should be judged by his/her hacking. On the other hand, I found that many people consider me wrong when I judge a hacker by his/her hacking when he/she is accused of sexual abuse. But apparently they are okay with someone accused of IP crime.
- mcphage 9y ago> I found that many people consider me wrong when I judge a hacker by his/her hacking when he/she is accused of sexual abuse. But apparently they are okay with someone accused of IP crime. Yup! Why do you suppose that might be?
- petercooper 9y agoSexual abuse and IP crime are very different in terms of their stigma, and rightly so, in my opinion, so I don't see what's surprising about your final paragraph.
- sanxiyn 9y agoSurprising part is that even on HN people disagree with "hackers should be judged by his/her hacking".
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- chooseaname 9y agoYou're not actually equating sex crimes and IP theft are you?
- 9y ago
- bitwize 9y agoSo what should we do, burn out his synapses with mycotoxin? The history of this business is written by IP thieves who, once they get big, turn around and lobby Congress for tougher IP laws, to criminalize the very methods they used to get big in the first place, so that the next gang of thieves will not be able to steal so effectively. What Carmack did is not egregiously unethical for this business. If anything he embodied the hacker spirit of "fuck the rules". It's on dubious ethical ground and certainly not the cautious approach used by Stallman, who colors assiduously within the lines so no one could ever accuse him of anything untoward. But again, look at the history of this business.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoHe's always been one of my programming heroes. I don't know what he did or didn't do in this case. But, if he did lie, that would bring him down a notch in my mind. However, if there's anyone who could quickly rewrite a system like that, it's definitely Carmack. Anyway, I will probably always read or listen to anything he has to say on the subject of programming.
- AboutTheWhisles 9y ago> He claimed that no source code from Zenimax ever got transferred over to Oculus. Then later admitted that the emails he had taken form his Zenimax laptop on his last day there did contain source code. There is a big difference between wrapping up a source control tree and having fragments in emails. Also let's not pretend that the idea that you can remember something and re-type it is fine, but if you copy and paste it from an email, that's terrible. The line is pretty blurry.
- Jach 9y agoIs this the same court expert who allegedly used unreadable code printouts (that nevertheless look different at a distance) to establish non-literal code copying and whose expert testimony is still under court seal instead of in the public record? It's hard to draw any inferences from that trial as an outsider. You'd do better to focus on the stories in Masters of Doom that show dubious ethics (like 'borrowing' work resources to work on games you later sell to get money and be free from the job where you were borrowing resources). Of course to some of us those ethics aren't really that dubious, it's the law that has dubious ethics.