John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying • Hacker News Board

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#101

Post by hydrogen18 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #70

sfifs wrote: post #29

The problem for John Camack was I think he was on both sides of the table writing code - so he wrote the code at Zenimax & re-wrote the code at Oculus. From a layman's perspective, he very well could have been "copying". Normally when you design clean room implementations, you use different people and make sure that the people who write the code never see the prior written code and the person giving the spec doesn't…

That seems like it is saying that Zenimax owns not only the code Carmack wrote while he was there, but also the knowledge and experience he gained while working there.

This was my thoughts exactly. If what the OP was proposing was not legitimate myself and countless others would be in legal jeopardy. I have written code that does the same thing at numerous employers because I am hired to solve the same problem. This doesn't mean I've copied anything, it just means I know what the hell I am doing.

If this was not legal, we would all be bound to the same employer for life. This could be extrapolated to virtually any employee. Have you assembled burgers for McDonald's before? If so, you can't work at Burger King, because they also make burgers and you have proprietary knowledge of McDonald's burgers.

I have spoken with numerous individuals who added support for specification X to one vendor's product, then did the same at the next job, so on and so forth. One individual had implemented the same specification for 3 different companies, all competitors, in just a few years. When you consider the breadth and depth of some specifications, the code doubtlessly is similar in form and obviously identical in function.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#102

Post by ChuckMcM » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

madgar wrote: post #36

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

Interesting rant on expert witnesses. Mostly interesting because I've done some expert witness testimony and found it fascinating. I completely resonate with John's issue with the expert's testimony and his understanding of it. John mentioned that their own expert testified differently but he didn't say whether or not their lawyers attempted to impeach their expert with cross examination. In the two cases I participa…

> In the limit it means "you read this code, understood how it worked, and wrote new code that could do the same function." You can stretch that to cover anything you have ever seen. Which is sad. I thought the industry adopted "clean room" techniques decades ago to avoid this kind of appearance of impropriety. It's more expensive, sure, but isn't eliminating legal risk something that typically gets paid for?

In this case, and others like it, a clean room is challenging because a principal (in this case Carmack) left one company and joined another. So the 'taint' if you will is in his head.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#103

Post by Cyph0n » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #89

ISL wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once espoused a similar opinion, but have since changed my mind. I'm a physicist, and once expressed to a judge I had met on the trail that I wished I could be judged by my academic peers. It was my belief that they would be more receptive to logical argument, understanding in their analysis, and more committed to fundamental principles. The judge was visibly surprised, but said little. What later changed my mind w…

> I wished I could be judged by my academic peers. It was my belief that they would be more receptive to logical argument, understanding in their analysis, and more committed to fundamental principles. Have you met any academics?

Exactly this. You would be surprised how petty and subjective academics are in practice. There is a reason why everything is done through committees in academia.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#104

Post by beachy » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

josu wrote: post #79

erikbye wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average Joe does not know what source code is, nor is he able to tell one piece of source code or one programming language apart from another, it is all gibberish to probably the majority of the jury. Hell, a few years back most Americans did not know that McDonald's was unhealthy, they had to be told this...

To further your point, the expert had to use Harry Potter as an analogy. In my opinion, analogies should be banned from courtrooms. They are fine for casual discussions, but they are often misleading.

Slugulus Eructo!

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#105

Post by hydrogen18 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #21

trendia wrote: post #5

This struck out at me: > There are objective measures of code similarity that can be quoted, like the edit distance between abstract syntax trees ... If this became the primary legal metric, then programmers who stole code would change the code so that functions achieved the same output with practically no AST similarity. That is, they could maximize functional similarity while minimzing code similarity. This would b…

This is like the joke about plagiarizing an essay: You can beat the automated check tools by using multiple sources of information and then re-writing them in your own words. Also Copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself (that would be patent). You don't have to go through this much trouble to write code that achieves the same output.

Also in the case of TurnItIn, you can just pay them before you submit your academic work. They show you how to avoid getting flagged by their system by indicating what needs to be changed.

It's a really great scam they've got going. Kenneth Lay would be very proud if he were still around.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#106

Post by timtadh » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #11

trendia wrote: post #5

This struck out at me: > There are objective measures of code similarity that can be quoted, like the edit distance between abstract syntax trees ... If this became the primary legal metric, then programmers who stole code would change the code so that functions achieved the same output with practically no AST similarity. That is, they could maximize functional similarity while minimzing code similarity. This would b…

Funnily enough I actually implemented this [0] two semesters ago while working as a Teacher's Assistant for the into CS class. It worked fairly well. I basically took the levenshtein algorithm and mapped it directly to ASTs and used that to find the % of similar elements in the code. It worked a few times and I caught 1 or 2 groups of cheaters. ....sadly in that class you were allowed to "work together" you just had…

A good general method for comparing ASTs is Tree Edit Distance. I have an implementation in python https://github.com/timtadh/zhang-shasha . If computing the exact distance is too slow you can use an approximate algorithm https://github.com/timtadh/pygram .

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#107

Post by zamalek » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

hydrogen18 wrote: post #101

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it is saying that Zenimax owns not only the code Carmack wrote while he was there, but also the knowledge and experience he gained while working there.

This was my thoughts exactly. If what the OP was proposing was not legitimate myself and countless others would be in legal jeopardy. I have written code that does the same thing at numerous employers because I am hired to solve the same problem. This doesn't mean I've copied anything, it just means I know what the hell I am doing. If this was not legal, we would all be bound to the same employer for life. This could…

Not to mention that the Zeni prototype was merely adequate, while the Oculus product is polished.

I think that ZeniMax are seriously salty about shoving off VR now that it's blossoming. That being said, working on company equipment during company time? Carmack screwed up.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#108

Post by rhino369 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

yaur wrote: post #58

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

Interesting rant on expert witnesses. Mostly interesting because I've done some expert witness testimony and found it fascinating. I completely resonate with John's issue with the expert's testimony and his understanding of it. John mentioned that their own expert testified differently but he didn't say whether or not their lawyers attempted to impeach their expert with cross examination. In the two cases I participa…

> In a jury trial I can imagine that having the jury understand your testimony is probably the most challenging. What I've seen from the sidelines is that what you want in an expert is someone who make your point, which has more to do with assertiveness than competence, and the credentials to back it up but who can't delve into the topic too deeply because information that the jury doesn't understand is an attack sur…

That is pretty much how it works on the civil side too. Pick an older professor from the best local college who has given testimony several times before.

The open secret is that a lawyer writes all the expert reports and the expert just reviews and makes edits.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#109

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #62

pseudometa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sitting on a jury yourself should alleviate you from worries about jurors not being experts themselves. Jurors are not experts in law, yet every case they sit on the lawyers bring in people to educate the jurors on the law and all aspects that pertain to a case. It is incredibly educational sitting on a jury.

Jurors are not expected to actually learn anything about the law. In fact they are told that they are not deciding or interpreting the law. Juries are finders of facts and the relevant law snippets and their interpretations are given to them by the judge. (Actually if I recall correctly, my jury wasn't even given the actual law text excerpts. Just the plaintext interpretation of them.) It can be interesting going thr…

> Jurors are not expected to actually learn anything about the law

Since jury instructions both ask for a determination of whether a particular legal standard was met (phrased in legal terms), and explanation of what facts (in lay terms) the jury must find to say that that standard was met, I think your statement is not completely accurate.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#110

Post by bshimmin » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

beachy wrote: post #100

gravypod wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say there are very few people who are doing things so out there that they cannot explain what they are doing. We aren't that special. We aren't magical unicors who work in all corners of our galaxy. No we are programmers, PhDs, mechanics, engineers. Our jobs share a lot in common with each other and can be easily broken down to their base components. That's the job of a programmer like Carmack. To break things do…

Spoken like an intellectual (not an insult - an observation). Could John Carmack explain binary space partitioning in an interesting way that made Joe Average feel like he got it? Most likely yes. But would Joe Average really "get it"? Could he make a meaningful judgement as to whether some other piece of software implementing BSP was more or less a copy of some other piece? (just using BSP as an example - not a good…

a little knowledge is dangerous

The quote from Alexander Pope is actually "A little learning is a dangerous thing". People often get this wrong, which is probably a tiny bit ironic.