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Comment by gear54rus | Hacker News Reader

I pretty much agree but what do you mean stolen tech?

They are probably talking about ZeniMax v. Oculus. ZeniMax owned the company where John Carmack worked. While the original Oculus Rift was being prototyped and later crowdfunded, Carmack was interested in VR and worked on the code/headset to get Doom 3 running on it. He later left to become the Oculus CTO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_v._Oculus

also see this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28871907

Carmack's actions in light of the pattern of Oculus acquiring tech from valve in shady ways can't be seen as anything other than just another guy betraying his former employer for oculus.

A giant stain on his reputation for anyone who can see just how oculus was built.

I read that thread and it has insider reports about how Valve chose to give its tech away to Oculus. How is that Oculus' fault?

Also don't see the issue with Carmack. Code you write ethically belongs to you, no matter what the law or your employment contract says

"valve" is a company made of people. Some people in valve pushed for valve to give away the tech to oculus, and then those same people left valve for oculus. That's not innocent. It's unethical.

Code you write under contract to an employer doesn't belong to you. Someone paid you for that.

1st-gen Rift was co-developed with Valve, and there's a sentimental narrative among gamers that Oculus backhanded Valve by fleeing to FB and becoming a platformer.

Not exactly. See my comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28871907

It's not that valve co-developed the rift, its that CV1 was exactly the steam sight headset with the CV tracking system and new fresnel lenses.

Valve employees convinced whoever made decisions over there to just give the tech over to oculus without a license or contract, and then those employees jumped ship to facebook/oculus in one of the most egregious unethical backstabs in recent tech memory.

Carmack couldn't convince his employer to give away the work he did, so he just took it with him and somehow was involved in a 'clean room' reimplementation of work he did for someone else. It's part of a pattern of unethical behaviour for the big names in oculus.