Zenimax vs Programmers

Zenimax, the owners of ID software recently filed suit against Oculus Rift claiming that their Chief Technology Guy John Carmack took their Intellectual Property with him when he left ID to pursue a dream of virtual reality with the garage born device from Palmer Luckey and the team at Oculus. The suite was filed soon after the two billion dollar acquisition of Oculus by Facebook. The timing of the filing indicates someone at Zenimax decided the time was right to pursue its case due to the improved economics of the Oculus project.

ID Software back in the day.

John Carmack is a pioneer in the world of 3D gaming, he is credited with discovering many of the techniques for getting computer game software to push the polygons required to render 3D worlds. The engines he wrote while at ID software invented the state of the art in 3D even if the playability of the games was on the decline since the glory days of doom and quake. He was more than an employee at ID, he founded the company and along with John Romero and their small team defined PC gaming through the late 80's and into the 90's, eventually the partnership between the two Johns fractured with John Carmack continuing his work at ID and John Romero pursuing other game projects. As with alot of game studios, ID software got bought by bigger publishers and at some point Zenimax acquired the keys to the IP kingdom that John and John had built.

Does a programmer own their own thoughts ?

The interesting question for software developers is do we own our thoughts ? If you invent something in your own time that is not related to your work for a company can that company later claim to own the IP ? Also does this create a chilling effect for future employment ? Does someone like John become unemployable due to his canon of existing programming work influencing his future work? Any software project John works on in the future is bound to be influencd by all the lessons from his preceding projects, is his only option going forward to move away from his field of expertise in 3D software and start writing code for banks? (it would still be some great banking software no doubt!)

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel

Writing code is often likened to creating art, this situation is akin to an early patron of Michelangelo claiming ownership of all subsequent works because they look similar and use some of the same colors and themes as the works he did for them. It would create a form of indentured servitude for people in creative fields. There is a strong view within the open source community of which John Carmack is a contributor that ideas are meant to be free. Early in his career he threatened to quit at ID due to someone wanting to patent some of his work, reportedly his reasoning was that if he hadn't been able to benefit from all the work, ideas and innovations of the programmers that came before him he wouldn't have been able to accomplish what he had. To paraphrase Isaac Newton, "If I have seen further than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants".

In an ideal world companies would own the source code of the work that programmers do for them but the ideas would belong to the coders who came up with them assignable either to the company or the community or to themselves as they see fit. Often the ideas are claimed by the companies, due to aggresive wording of employment contracts or the context in which the idea evolved.