In Triumph of the Nerds, Steve Jobs quotes Pablo Picasso, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." Given the context in which that statement was made, I would have to say that I agree with him. It was made in 1996, when Microsoft had a virtual monopoly on the personal computer market and Apple was tanking. Jobs had been fired from his position at Apple due to creative differences with the CEO, John Scully. Jobs saw the company that he had helped to create being cornered by a company that had used some of Apple's own design techniques to make their own success.
I have to understand where he was coming from. He was angry about the situation at the time. He did have a point, though. Apple effectively stole the GUI from Xerox and, in turn, Microsoft stole it from Apple. Xerox owned the technology to begin with and could have effectively destroyed Apple and Microsoft before they got bigger. It would seem that in this situation, the person who stole the technology made a bigger profit off of it than the company they stole it from.
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