Presumably, if Carmack didn't want him to have the data, he would have deleted it before giving/selling him the gear 10+ years ago. What he's asking here is: "

Presumably, if Carmack didn't want him to have the data, he would have deleted it before giving/selling him the gear 10+ years ago. What he's asking here is: "I have these old NeXT boxes I want to get rid of. I promised I wouldn't give the data to anyone else, so I want to copy it somewhere safe before wiping the disks" Don MacAskill is anything but oblivious.