> Next, they hired Carmack, who is accused of copying thousands of documents from his computer at ZeniMax.
This claim sounds pretty dubious. Has John Carmack said anything about it?
This claim sounds pretty dubious. Has John Carmack said anything about it?
Guilt needs to be proven, but I don't find it hard to imagine.
Side note: HN may not realize, but the public sympathy in this case may not be with Carmack and Oculus. ZeniMax, as parent of Bethesda, has a largely solid rep among the video game consumer audience as publisher of respectable games, and while the acquisition of id was initially seen as id selling out, their latest game under Bethesda (the first shipped without Carmack at the company) is widely regarded as a major return to form for a once-struggling game developer. Meanwhile Occulus burned through most of its initial goodwill with (perceived to be) disappointing pricing, exclusiviy shenanigans and losing a lot of ground to HTC's strong Vive offering. Carmack has tons of deserved cachet with us, but the public at large may be ready to hang him and Oculus. This will get ugly.
It's not like the my mind is made up, I don't know either way. Curious to see what the trial will bring.
Also, it's not ipso facto illegal to implement the invention or claims embodied within a patent. That's just not how it works.
The "video game consumer audience" probably doesn't even know ZeniMax exists.
...as an initiator of frivolous lawsuits.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/elder-scrolls-vs-minec...
facebook vs. Zenimax? I wonder which has more public acclaim and recognition to your point, not that I'm a particular fan of either...
Company image can be ruined in lawsuits which can turn off consumers from purchasing your goods.
Software patents, and in fact most patents should go away.
litigious bastards run by clueless lawyer/pron peddler (btw how curious any mention of friendfinder quickly vanish from his wiki page)
The core of the case revolves around ZeniMax accusing Carmack of copying thousands of Doom 3 source files, you know, the ones Carmack personally authored and released as GPL before selling ID.
If you'd said he violated an employee contract by working for Oculus on his off-hours because he couldn't help himself, I'd believe it. But stealing documents? No.
there are undoubtedly many game programmers and programmers in general that are completely unknown to the public and maybe even their peers that would be in the running for being "the best".
carmack seems to enjoy his status, which feeds it even more. he is no doubt good, but his cult following may cloud how good he is a bit.
also, who wants to rewrite code they've already written? there's plenty of incentive to want to take code you've already written. nobody likes solving the same problems twice.
If anything, the fact that Carmack's statements (in this article) focus not on denying anything, but rather focusing on how what he did was ok, it's likely that many (and at very least a core) of the accusations are true. This is referred to as an affirmative defense.