4 ms·

Read the exact statements carefully. This entire thread is focused on the fact that Oculus's lawyers serve Oculus's best interests, which are not necessarily a

by sheetjs 12y ago

Read the exact statements carefully. This entire thread is focused on the fact that Oculus's lawyers serve Oculus's best interests, which are not necessarily aligned with Carmack's best interests.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
Yeah, you're right. I was just surprised that there wasn't more pushback on this point: "The question that isn't answered here is, well, does Id own Carmack's work?" It's up to you how much to disagree with the concept of programmer slavery. Personally, I find it abhorrent that we've allowed the law to evolve into a state to permit it at all. But this is idealism and not pragmatism speaking, and this was a subthread about pragmatism. Sorry.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  While I don't support Zenimax's position, I don't buy your argument about programmer slavery either. You could just as easily argue that this was an issue of 'freedom of contract,' wherein any adult person can waive rights in a contract if the person considers it to be in their economic interest. I'm not sure that this particular contract is even valid, but you should acquaint yourself with the idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_contract
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    Could we please keep the argument impersonal? Saying something like "you should acquaint yourself with the idea" forces me to either respond "I was in fact already familiar with the idea" or keep silent and let you make presuppositions about what I don't know. The former makes for boring reading; the latter is unfair. And to the other commenter who has accused me of lacking perspective and being disrespectful: it must be nice having enough money where you're not forced to choose between accepting a contract that strips you of your right to work on what you want in your own free time, or letting your cat die from cancer you can't pay to treat. If that's not some form of slavery, then apparently I do lack perspective. (If there's some confusion as to how this relates to the original topic, it's because the exact same form of law is being applied in both cases: it's considered normal and fair for companies to offer contracts that default to stripping programmers of their right to work on what they want in their free time, and it's up to programmers to be extremely careful not to accidentally sign something that does so. Apparently even Carmack isn't free from this, and that's what prompted my original comment.) As for the argument, I should choose to bow out rather than write a lengthy expansion of my thoughts, as this is the wrong subthread for it. Maybe I'll post a toplevel comment later if there's sufficient interest, but there are probably more important topics to discuss.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      I can only go by what arguments you choose to present. I'm not a big supporter of 'freedom of contract' (as a strategic response to regulation), but it's such an obvious objection to your slavery argument that I was surprised you didn't address it. As for the more general, companies have interests, just like individuals, and seek to maximize them. Numerous people have pointed out that they are able to negotiate exceptions or get such clauses removed from their employment contracts. I'm sorry about your sick cat, but I also think that economic/contractual negotiations are a fact of life that it's better to prepare for than expect protection from.
    - eropple 12y ago
      I'm sorry about your cat, but taking a job--of your own free will--that results on you not being able to work on your own stuff in exchange for more money than well over ninety percent of humanity makes in a year is so very far from slavery that superlatives fail me. You are equating the life of a pet with the forced bondage of tens of thousands of people today and the historical bondage of millions--and in the process you conflate "it will emotionally hurt me to quit" to "I will be hunted down and forcibly brought back or murdered if I attempt to quit". You do not have perspective--whether it is overstating the impact of your own situation or perhaps not understanding the extremity of fucking slavery, man--and I think saying so is eminently fair.
      - sillysaurus3 12y ago
        https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aslavery https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aslavery a condition compared to that of a slave in respect of exhausting labor or restricted freedom. I've been using this definition the whole time. I really didn't want to have this debate, but you're hunting me through the comments and forcing me to. How is it disrespectful to use a word in the way that it's defined? I'm genuinely curious and looking to learn.
        rfrey 12y ago
        https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Aslave https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Aslave a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. Nothing about a programming job, even with restrictive contract terms, is anywhere close to being considered legal property. It's disrespectful to people affected by real slavery because it draws equivalence between not liking some aspect of a contract freely entered into, with being born into a situation where your children could be taken from you and sold to someone else. You accused another commenter of aristocratic myopia ("It must be nice to have so much money..." etc). I suggest a bit of introspection is in order before leveling that accusation at others.
  - malandrew 12y ago
    Yeah, but relationships are often symmetric. Employees rarely have an equal footing when entering a contract. If anyone can achieve equal footing with an employer, it's Carmack, however, he may not have had the degree of privilege that he has today.
- eropple 12y ago
  This is hyperventilation. There's little reason to hire a programmer--at the rates we get paid, no less, and especially a guy like John Carmack--without being able to leverage their work for competitive advantage. Which, in the games industry, means closed-source software and copyright assignation. And you can not like that all you want, but attempting to equate it to "slavery" is childishly disrespectful to, you know, slaves. I've made the decision that I won't work for a company with wide assignation of copyright, because I'm not a slave and I have a choice. Get some perspective.
  - mfisher87 12y ago
    Not to take a side on this (there's bound to be a silly amount of controversy over taking any stand over what is and isn't slavery), but what do you consider slavery? Do you have to be physically forced in to it, or can economic pressures cause slavery? If you consider "right to work" an inalienable right, maybe slavery is a spectrum and any degree of infringement of that right puts you on the spectrum. And no, I obviously wouldn't argue anyone has it as bad as those in physical slavery by any stretch of imagination. Anyway, take for example the McDonald's employee who has no hireable skills, doesn't make a living wage, and his employer schedules him a) erratically and last-minute so he can't get another job and b) under a certain number of hours so the employee is not full-time and therefore not due benefits. Here, and in the Carmack case, the employer is deliberately taking steps to reduce the employee's ability to work elsewhere or to improve his place in society by work done on personal time. That seems like a pretty significant parallel to slavery, if not a criteria of slavery.
    - eropple 12y ago
      I think the definition of slavery is pretty well-established. http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/what_is_modern_slavery.aspx http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/what_is_mod... Economic oppression, while certainly a problem, isn't the same thing. And John Carmack--you know, the guy with Ferraris, plural--cannot even claim to be economically oppressed. He is in a better position than almost anybody on the planet to negotiate for himself. (Programmers as a general class are only in a better position than the overwhelming majority of the planet to negotiate for themselves.) (Also, and this isn't directed at you, but I find it very hard to believe that that post would have been downvoted if slavery was something that afflicted white males. Funny, that.)
- andy_ppp 12y ago
  I agree with you; they let him go and work on other projects and VR/Oculus in particular will benefit themselves - how sick to go after Carmack given the devotion and progress and bottom line dollars he's delivered to them over countless hours of no doubt massive hard work. I think the law needs to changed such that you can apply a common sense position in every single case. I feel that we should be able to get a fair settlement here and that would be the pay John Carmack earned from Id during his time working at Oculus - not the impossible to calculate contribution he's made to Oculus as a company. The law does not support me on this because it's a tool of the wealthy and powerful to persecute those with less resources. Terrible.

by sheetjs 12y ago

Read the exact statements carefully. This entire thread is focused on the fact that Oculus's lawyers serve Oculus's best interests, which are not necessarily aligned with Carmack's best interests.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

Yeah, you're right. I was just surprised that there wasn't more pushback on this point: "The question that isn't answered here is, well, does Id own Carmack's work?" It's up to you how much to disagree with the concept of programmer slavery. Personally, I find it abhorrent that we've allowed the law to evolve into a state to permit it at all. But this is idealism and not pragmatism speaking, and this was a subthread about pragmatism. Sorry.

anigbrowl 12y ago
While I don't support Zenimax's position, I don't buy your argument about programmer slavery either. You could just as easily argue that this was an issue of 'freedom of contract,' wherein any adult person can waive rights in a contract if the person considers it to be in their economic interest. I'm not sure that this particular contract is even valid, but you should acquaint yourself with the idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_contract
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Could we please keep the argument impersonal? Saying something like "you should acquaint yourself with the idea" forces me to either respond "I was in fact already familiar with the idea" or keep silent and let you make presuppositions about what I don't know. The former makes for boring reading; the latter is unfair. And to the other commenter who has accused me of lacking perspective and being disrespectful: it must be nice having enough money where you're not forced to choose between accepting a contract that strips you of your right to work on what you want in your own free time, or letting your cat die from cancer you can't pay to treat. If that's not some form of slavery, then apparently I do lack perspective. (If there's some confusion as to how this relates to the original topic, it's because the exact same form of law is being applied in both cases: it's considered normal and fair for companies to offer contracts that default to stripping programmers of their right to work on what they want in their free time, and it's up to programmers to be extremely careful not to accidentally sign something that does so. Apparently even Carmack isn't free from this, and that's what prompted my original comment.) As for the argument, I should choose to bow out rather than write a lengthy expansion of my thoughts, as this is the wrong subthread for it. Maybe I'll post a toplevel comment later if there's sufficient interest, but there are probably more important topics to discuss.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    I can only go by what arguments you choose to present. I'm not a big supporter of 'freedom of contract' (as a strategic response to regulation), but it's such an obvious objection to your slavery argument that I was surprised you didn't address it. As for the more general, companies have interests, just like individuals, and seek to maximize them. Numerous people have pointed out that they are able to negotiate exceptions or get such clauses removed from their employment contracts. I'm sorry about your sick cat, but I also think that economic/contractual negotiations are a fact of life that it's better to prepare for than expect protection from.
  - eropple 12y ago
    I'm sorry about your cat, but taking a job--of your own free will--that results on you not being able to work on your own stuff in exchange for more money than well over ninety percent of humanity makes in a year is so very far from slavery that superlatives fail me. You are equating the life of a pet with the forced bondage of tens of thousands of people today and the historical bondage of millions--and in the process you conflate "it will emotionally hurt me to quit" to "I will be hunted down and forcibly brought back or murdered if I attempt to quit". You do not have perspective--whether it is overstating the impact of your own situation or perhaps not understanding the extremity of fucking slavery, man--and I think saying so is eminently fair.
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
      https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aslavery https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aslavery a condition compared to that of a slave in respect of exhausting labor or restricted freedom. I've been using this definition the whole time. I really didn't want to have this debate, but you're hunting me through the comments and forcing me to. How is it disrespectful to use a word in the way that it's defined? I'm genuinely curious and looking to learn.
      - rfrey 12y ago
        https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Aslave https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Aslave a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. Nothing about a programming job, even with restrictive contract terms, is anywhere close to being considered legal property. It's disrespectful to people affected by real slavery because it draws equivalence between not liking some aspect of a contract freely entered into, with being born into a situation where your children could be taken from you and sold to someone else. You accused another commenter of aristocratic myopia ("It must be nice to have so much money..." etc). I suggest a bit of introspection is in order before leveling that accusation at others.
- malandrew 12y ago
  Yeah, but relationships are often symmetric. Employees rarely have an equal footing when entering a contract. If anyone can achieve equal footing with an employer, it's Carmack, however, he may not have had the degree of privilege that he has today.
eropple 12y ago
This is hyperventilation. There's little reason to hire a programmer--at the rates we get paid, no less, and especially a guy like John Carmack--without being able to leverage their work for competitive advantage. Which, in the games industry, means closed-source software and copyright assignation. And you can not like that all you want, but attempting to equate it to "slavery" is childishly disrespectful to, you know, slaves. I've made the decision that I won't work for a company with wide assignation of copyright, because I'm not a slave and I have a choice. Get some perspective.
- mfisher87 12y ago
  Not to take a side on this (there's bound to be a silly amount of controversy over taking any stand over what is and isn't slavery), but what do you consider slavery? Do you have to be physically forced in to it, or can economic pressures cause slavery? If you consider "right to work" an inalienable right, maybe slavery is a spectrum and any degree of infringement of that right puts you on the spectrum. And no, I obviously wouldn't argue anyone has it as bad as those in physical slavery by any stretch of imagination. Anyway, take for example the McDonald's employee who has no hireable skills, doesn't make a living wage, and his employer schedules him a) erratically and last-minute so he can't get another job and b) under a certain number of hours so the employee is not full-time and therefore not due benefits. Here, and in the Carmack case, the employer is deliberately taking steps to reduce the employee's ability to work elsewhere or to improve his place in society by work done on personal time. That seems like a pretty significant parallel to slavery, if not a criteria of slavery.
  - eropple 12y ago
    I think the definition of slavery is pretty well-established. http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/what_is_modern_slavery.aspx http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/what_is_mod... Economic oppression, while certainly a problem, isn't the same thing. And John Carmack--you know, the guy with Ferraris, plural--cannot even claim to be economically oppressed. He is in a better position than almost anybody on the planet to negotiate for himself. (Programmers as a general class are only in a better position than the overwhelming majority of the planet to negotiate for themselves.) (Also, and this isn't directed at you, but I find it very hard to believe that that post would have been downvoted if slavery was something that afflicted white males. Funny, that.)
andy_ppp 12y ago
I agree with you; they let him go and work on other projects and VR/Oculus in particular will benefit themselves - how sick to go after Carmack given the devotion and progress and bottom line dollars he's delivered to them over countless hours of no doubt massive hard work. I think the law needs to changed such that you can apply a common sense position in every single case. I feel that we should be able to get a fair settlement here and that would be the pay John Carmack earned from Id during his time working at Oculus - not the impossible to calculate contribution he's made to Oculus as a company. The law does not support me on this because it's a tool of the wealthy and powerful to persecute those with less resources. Terrible.