Glass writes:
"First, Flynn operates within the moral parameters of old-fashioned, individualist free enterprise. Outraged by Dillinger's theft of Flynn's inventions, these parameters are vindicated and consecrated by the hero attaining ENCOM'S presidency. The system works, you see, because given unbridled competition-not fixed by "unfair" abuses of power-the cream rises to the surface. The fact that in Adam Smith's original argument the surface referred to that of the market, while in TRON it has become the corporation (shown earlier in the film to stifle free competition) is apparently of no account. Or is the problem the corporation? The film fudges here, as it must if it is not to become an explicitly anti-corporate statement. The rotten individual, fingered as the villain, takes the heat for corporate social relations. In turn, the evil individual's responsibility is shuffled off, displaced onto another, more evil and powerful villain, the MCP."
So what *is* an appropriate relationship between Programmer and Corporation, between Individual and Collective enterprise? What ethical obligations does the Corporation have to the Programmers it employs? What obligations do the Individuals have to their Corporate employer? Do things change when the Corporation becomes a Client, rather than an Employer? Do movies like TRON cause problems by turning the relationship into one of competition? Or do they accurately reflect how people in the industry view corporate entities like Microsoft, Apple, or Google?
This is a legal issue that has come up time and time again. Does a programmer own the work that they program while they are working for a corporation. The courts have ruled that the work one does while at work is owned by the corporation that they work for. It doesn't matter if they were the ones who wrote it, in the end the corporation still owns it and benefits from it. The only ethical obligations that a corporation owes to it's programmers is a decent space in which to do the work, good pay, reasonable hours, and benefits. The obligations that the individual has to their corporation is to sign over everything they ever created while using the tools allotted to them by the corporation. The same thing goes with laboratory scientists, all the work they do belongs to the company or college they work for. All their research is funded by a source and they must give the credit to them. A scientist's name and a programmer's name can be on the work for creating or discovering it, but it is still owned by the corporate entity. This means that the corporation is allowed to make a profit off of what is created and not have to directly share it with the person who wrote the money making program. The only way to hold and keep all of the credit is to patent and own the rights to what you have created by developing it on your own time and with your own resources and selling licenses to other companies. That is the only time a programmer truly owns their work. I personally don't believe that TRON displayed the relationship between corporation and employee in a negative way. Each employee has the choice to work at the corporation they choose to work for, and the employees of ENCOM could leave their job at any point in time. The point that TRON was trying to make was that even if you steal someone elses work and promote yourself to the top, you will fall down at some point and your falsification will be discovered. It is the typical childrens story incorporating the Golden Rule and Karma of some sort.
ReplyDeleteMelanie makes a great point showing that the work a programmer does for a corporation is considered the corporation's work and not the programmers. In the movie Tron I think it does a good job showing the relationship between corporation and individual. The only real ethical obligations that the corporation has is to provide is a reasonable pay, hours, and the technology to get the work done. The individual responsibilities are to maintain a professional manner while in the company while producing a finished product that matches the requirements. You could say that the corporation becomes a client in a way. The programmer is not necessarily making the product of the client. If the corporation is talking directly to the client they will be telling the programmers what to do from the client thus making them the clients in the programmer's eye. I feel like the movie Tron doesn't fit into this really. Flynn makes those programs while working, but before being able to show them off Dillinger steals the programs and becomes promoted. The movie Tron is more of an issue of someone cheating the system by stealing someone else code. The reason it becomes an individual fighting a corporation is because Dillinger is in charge now. While working for a company you expect to get promotions based off of how well you are doing within. When someone jacks your code and gets promoted it becomes personal.
ReplyDeleteI think the parallel that Melanie makes to a scientist in a research facility is spot on. The research being done is supported by the facility and by donations to the facility. The researchers are working under the knowledge that whatever discovery may come will be owned by the research facility. The research team will indeed be credited with the discovery.
ReplyDeleteIn the programming world, there is a large group of people who believe in open source software. They believe that the software developed either by themselves or as a collaborative effort should be shared with the masses as long as credit is given to those who developed in. In many cases, they do not expect monetary compensation.
When someone decides to work for a corporation as a programmer it is understood that they do what they can to benefit the company and work as a team player just like everyone else that works there. Anything that a particular programmer invents, or creates goes to the company and the company gets credit for it just like anything else within the company. People in the marketing department give the company commercials and ads that they make instead of holding them as their own because that is their job, and I guess that the programs that are written aren’t seen any differently.
ReplyDeleteThe obligations that a corporation has to its programmers are basically just to treat them well and give them all the new technologies and things that they will need. The programmers that work for the corporations’ just need to do their job to the best of their ability and be able to accept that the code they write for the corporation will be property of the corporation and no longer theirs. If they cannot accept that they shouldn’t be working for a big company and should work for themselves where they can get full credit for everything that they do.
I believe that when you take the distribution of power and authority between different elements of a company or corporation, things can be seen differently depending on what angle they are seen at. Programmers when looking at the entire corporation are the employees that make the dreams happen. If a corporation wants to build a system to help the client manage shipping in a computer manufacturing business, the cooperation will through other employees design the system and the programmers are the ones who actually build it. It is the same concept of contractors. Architects will design a building finding all the framing, wiring, plumbing etc, however the builders actually construct the building.
ReplyDeleteWhen looking at programmers in a perspective of individual you can see they may only have one piece of a program. I know I've written games and applications with other students, however I wrote one piece of it. The communications and collaboration that goes on is collective. For these enterprises to work and become so big they need to work together and communicate.
It is very possible for a corporate executive to try and take credit for the work the programmer does as part of a project and this is what we see done in Tron. It may be possible however when ethics are brought in, it shouldn't be possible. Credit should always be given even if the program was written for the corporation. Ownership may be taken by a corporation however the corporation shouldn't take credit for the actual work it took to design and create that system.
In a way corporations are clients to the programmer. The programmers work for the corporations and the corporations work for the end clients or the users of the programs being designed.
Movies and examples of this such as Tron the movie, show and really bring out the extreme angles and perspectives of this. They show how deep it can really go and how big it can be. We as average users don't really think of even Microsoft word as a long document of millions of lines of code. We see an application we can use to get tasks done. Only when prompted or curious we ponder to who, why and how it came to be at our disposal.
As I was watching Tron 1 again I didn’t think of the Corporation as being a bad thing. I thought the bad part was the fact the Flynn’s programs were stolen from him and another coworker claimed them. The Corporation even gave Flynn’s coworker a pretty good deal and made him head of the company. As we say at the end of the film that’s what may have happened anyway even without the use and story of the MCP.
ReplyDeleteFlynn got to get credit for his product in the end once he proved it was his coworkers. But, the bad side of the film to me was when computer program were showing intelligence and that scared some people. Some people weren’t scared but out right hated programs like the MCP because of what it was learning and doing like the old programmer said in the video.
However, the video did bring up a good point about how do people get credit for these huge programs when they write them or just a small portion of them. As Matt said its hard when everyone is working together to create a widely popular and complex piece of code that ends up making Microsoft Word. But, I also think that employees are aware they may never get mentioned for their code they put in like some of the coworkers will. But, as Sami mentions they should get paid for it I think.
So, I think an appropriate relationship with a company and a program is that they need to both a honest about employee compensation and who own the intellectual property of the program and who benefits the most from it.
The Corporation/Developer relationship is particularly interesting because corporations need developers to function but developers can exist without corporations by freelancing. Some developers choose to work with corporations because corporations provide them with a certain amount of support and security that allows them to focus on the part of their job they like best--programming--and not be responsible for every single aspect of developing a product or service.
ReplyDeleteSome of the protection offered by corporations is legal. If a lawsuit arises because of a developer's work a project, the corporation is held legally and financially responsible and not the individual. Corporations also provide security in the form of a steady paycheck and clearly defined working hours and job expectations. In a corporate environment, developers are only responsible for a certain part of producing an application and not for the aspects handled by project managers, sales staff, accountants, human resources, and customer service representatives. This relieves a lot of the stress and anxiety endured by freelance developers.
In return for the support of the corporation, developers are expected to adhere to the guidelines of behavior and work ethic outlined by the company and to focus on contributing to their assigned area of responsibility to the best of their ability. They are obligated to stay focused on the work of expected of them from the beginning to the end of specified working hours. In a corporate environment, there are (or should be) clearly defined expectations about who owns the application or product to which a developer contributes. These expectations should be defined before work on a project begins. Most often, the company owns all of the rights to the final product and the developer is credited somewhere in the bowels of its code or documentation. Developers should be credited for their specific role on a project. If they were the lead developer on a project, this should be noted in the manner that they are recognized; similarly, a developer who contributed to a small portion of an application should not be mis-represented as a primary contributor.
Ethically, corporations are obligated to compensate developers according to the terms outlined when the developer accepted the position. The corporation is also expected to maintain a safe, comfortable work environment; to uphold its provision of any insurance benefits or retirement contributions; and to provide the developer with the hours of work and job responsibilities as outlined in the job offer to which both parties agreed.
The relationship between developer and corporation is complicated by the fact that developers are most often part of a team of developers and other related professionals. While all members of the team should ideally strive to meet the group's productions goals without placing primary concern on the recognition of their individual achievements, competition and petty jealousies frequently occur in group settings. This is not unique among web developers. If there as an issue of code authorship, as seen in Tron, a well-organized company should not have a problem identifying by whom the work was actually executed. Most experienced companies have version control systems in place that monitor which developers make what changes to which files and when. These systems use usernames and passwords to ensure that each developer is correctly identified and to avoid the sort of fraud explored in Tron.
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ReplyDeleteWhen the corporation becomes a client, the relationship changes. The client does not owe the same comfort and security to the developer. The developer takes on all responsibilities for a project's execution. Ownership of the final product should be expressed in the project's formal contract, which should also specify who incurs any legal responsibility for its use. The developer should still expect to work during specified hours to the best of his or her ability, with the same focus and dedication to the required responsibilities as he or she would when working for a corporation. The client should still compensate the developer according to the contract.
In the web industry, many people aspire to work at large corporations like Google because of their reputation for excellence and the large exposure that the products and applications they produce receive. One of the difficult things about working for such a large organization, however, is that developers almost always focus on a very small part of a large application and are rarely given the opportunity to contribute to every stage of a product's development, from planning to release. This type of work environment works for some, but other developers would be dissatisfied with this scope of work, seeking more freedom in expressing their ideas and more control over their development into finished products.