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Comment by chpwssn | Hacker News Reader

Issue #1 is still an interesting albeit sad read https://github.com/google/project-gameface/issues/1

> Since the issue was raised on HackerNews -- my life has been hell. Not an hour goes past without some kind of personal attack that ranges from a shaming to an outright physical threat. It has affected my livelihood, my career, and my health. It destroyed a family vacation when I was supposed to unplug. Nobody deserves that, and certainly not someone who is innocent of what they are accused of. Please be aware of that should you ever feel emotional again.

We are toxic and we're not seeing it. We should stop posting a link to that thread imo.

Oh he very much deserved it. We need to discourage the culture in tech where people set up VC-style "conversations" with the intention of scoping out ideas.

The Winget product manager, who stole the Appget product idea, on the other hand probably does deserve the blowback

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287

I agree to the sentiment, but not that he should be harassed for it. It seems that too many of us are happy to hide behind the corporate veil and be less than human when it comes to treating others fairly. Google KNEW of this guys vulnerable position, had him consult on an issue, then released a (very similar) competing app (and we all know where it will be in 3 years - at least its open source this time). I get that these things happen in the corporate world every day, but that doesn't make it right.

If COVID taught me anything it's that it doesn't matter where you go looking on the political spectrum, be it left or right, you'll always find enough people that are fine to be the judge, jury and executioner.

I think lockdowns deteriorated a lot of peoples mental health and we will only see the consequences of not addressing it over the coming decades.

As it stands now, that thread is a very clear cautionary tale. It is posing links to the next ongoing, emotionally charged, accusation we need to be cautious of.

here are the key facts of what happened:

1. Oz Ramos developed an open source project called Handsfree.js starting in 2018 to help make computing more accessible, inspired by helping someone at a homeless shelter recovering from a stroke.

2. Around 1-2 years ago, Laurence Moroney from Google asked Oz about using Handsfree.js for accessibility. Oz showed him demos of Handsfree.js and related projects like a gesture mapper.

3. Oz asked Laurence for support and collaboration, but felt Laurence ghosted him after getting information about his projects.

4. Google later released Project Gameface, which has similarities to Oz's work in using computer vision for accessibility. Oz felt Google stole his ideas instead of supporting him.

5. Oz posted about this publicly on GitHub, accusing Google and Laurence of stealing his work when they could have supported his open source efforts while he struggled with poverty and mental health issues.

6. The post gained attention on social media and Hacker News. Many criticized Google based on Oz's account.

7. Laurence responded stating Project Gameface was inspired by Lance Carr, not Oz's work. He explained Handsfree.js did not solve a specific technical problem he inquired about.

8. Laurence said he could not directly financially support Oz the way he requested, and directed him to Google's formal processes for charitable giving and support.

9. Oz apologized for accusing Laurence of literal theft and the emotional tone of his posts. He explained he was struggling and felt validation-seeking from their interaction.

10. Laurence accepted the apology but noted the severe reputational damage and harassment he faced from the public accusation.

11. Oz deleted his repos and expressed regret over the harm caused. A professor retracted his earlier criticism of Laurence.

3 seems to be a bit wrong based on Laurence's post on github https://github.com/google/project-gameface/issues/1#issuecom...

  So why didn't you help and why did you ghost me when I asked? <<

  As I explained at the time, my team isn't set up to help individuals in the way that you asked. I brought your case before those that can within Google, and left it to them to reach out to you. Indeed, you mentioned (in your first post in this thread) that they already gave you a computer -- I am not sure when that happened, but those are the folks that do that kind of payment/donation, and not my team. I asked you, at the time, if you had a charity or other organization that you work with, because that would be the only way we would be able to do anything, and maybe not even then, and the answer was 'no'. That's where the conversation ended.

With Laurence's response it doesn't sound like he stole anything at all.

Yes, people should read the whole thread instead of jumping to conclusions after the first post.

But it does seem like there was an opportunity to collaborate?

I think there's a gap between "opportunity to collaborate" and "my life is hell and you stole my idea"? If something is open source (and licensed appropriately) then even collaboration becomes moot. There are a lot of takers in the world, and not many givers.

To what end though? They’d exist at completely different ends of the technical stack to the point where it’s likely very unusable for the final product. Even though they do similar things, it’s very doubtful collaboration would have netted anything.

That's exactly an example of how our world becomes immediate and binary.

In a world that tries to be pluralistic we end up judging in a binary way. The classical good v.s. evil, where there's middle ground (to the story).

It's really complex to judge and we're in an era that everything becomes judgmental quickly.

There are many horrible stories of stolen ideas by big tech companies. Some are very nasty.

On the other hand, even at my current workplace, sometimes at trade-shows or emails, someone approaches and suggests something that's similar to what we're working for many years (but yet to release).

Even Alexander Graham Bell had a patent conflict when first registering his invention, not to mention Tesla :)

Without being judgemental, OP in that thread has clearly some kind of mental disorder, or was/is under a severe stress condition.

Exceptionally so when you realise that the end result was him deleting his projects and his account from github.

This is just another example of google bulldozing into a space, and eradicating the competition. And for what? Another product that people will depend upon that will be in the graveyard within a few years.

Sure, this isn't lmoroney's fault per se, but this WAS a consequence of his actions as a googler. He is WORKING in a position which has great power (he is not an individual releasing a product here, he is google), he should exercise greater responsibility - especially when consulting with someone who he already KNEW was in a vulnerable situation and then using your massive backing to release a competing product (which just so happens to be a block based facial gesture workflow builder). The imbalance of power here is colossal. Its literally individual homeless guy vs google.

We should all do better. Hiding behind the corporate veil shouldn't be an excuse to be less human.

I sincerely hope the poster is getting help with his mental health and is in a better position than he was last year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com