posted on Jan, 18 2011 @ 05:28 PM
Originally posted by Iamschist
reply to post by unityemissions
Didn't Wozniack and Gates steal from IBM and Xerox, I guess Robber Barons still exist. It's a proud American tradition.
No, they did not. You don't know what you are talking about plus you've mixed up your Steves. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs co-founded Apple. Wozniak
didn't steal from anyone. He's a genius in his own right who developed the core components of the Apple ][ computer. Basically he figured out a way to
take the refresh signal for the CRT screen and use it to refresh the memory chips on the opposite side of its AC cycle. No one had ever done that
before. He really has done nothing significant since and he hardly qualifies as a 'robber baron,' though he is wealthy. At least, he used to be. Woz
has a problem. He spends a lot of money. I wouldn't at all be surprised to read that he has lost his entire fortune.
You can claim that Jobs "stole" from Xerox if you want, but it is far fetched. He 'stole' the idea of a Graphical User Interface and mouse and
incorporated into the first Macs, this based on a single visit to Xerox PARC where he had witnessed a demo. Xerox didn't bother to capitalize on their
idea; Jobs did. Gates then 'stole' the GUI idea for Windows. This whole steal what from whom issue has already been through the courts and is a done
deal.
Gates did not steal from IBM. Gates developed IBM-DOS at the behest of IBM. He also used his own version, MS-DOS, which was technically equivalent to
IBM-DOS and was part of their marketing deal. If he had actually stolen it from IBM they would have sued the pants off of him. What Gates did do is
BUY Seattle-DOS from its developer (It had several names, including 86-DOS,) who had 'stolen' the idea from CP/M, its 8-bit equivalent. It's a very
close knock-off. It's a wonder Digital Research did not sue Seattle Computer, but it was for an entirely different processor. In other words, they
looked similar on the screen and performed the same functions, but the code used to get them to do it was entirely different. Indeed, they HAD to be
different because they were used on different processors. And that's probably the answer right there of why they didn't get sued; they didn't have a
case. Seattle DOS was the basis for both IBM-DOS and MS-DOS, so in effect MS-DOS came out of the CP/M tradition..
There are plenty of reasons to question the business practices of both Microsoft and Apple, but your claim that "Wozniack (sic) and Gates [stole] from
IBM and Xerox" is completely and utterly bogus.
edit on 1/18/2011 by schuyler because: (no reason given)