Apple the First American Trillion-Dollar Company

[StrayKAT]

Good artists copy, Great Artists Steal. 1 Trillion dollars worth of stolen products sold to people.

I assume you mean the oft-repeated statement that Jobs stole the Mac's GUI by Xerox? You should probably get your history from the people involved. He had made a deal with Xerox and offered company shares, if he was allowed to go to their labs. From there, he took their GUI and mouse idea and improved upon it (and they willingly let him do it.. why do you think he was allowed there in the first place? Just for fun?).

As for the rest of their foundational tech, it wasn't stolen. When Jobs left, he formed NeXTStep, which was way ahead of it's time in implementing desktop UNIX. And the parts borrowed were FREE. Like BSD UNIX and Mach research. Even the damn PS4 is based off of BSD.. but I hear no one talking about it being stolen technology. Even the BSD engineers would laugh at anyone saying that. The BSD license is the most flexible in existence on purpose. It's why Jobs and Sony used it to begin with.

 

[trparky]

The BSD license is the most flexible in existence on purpose.

The idea of the BSD License was to make a software license where you can take from the community but you have no legal obligation to give any of your changes back to the community from which it came from. The GNU License is very different in this regard, whenever you make a change you are legally required to give back those changes to the source code.

 

[StrayKAT]

The idea of the BSD License was to make a software license where you can take from the community but you have no legal obligation to give any of your changes back to the community from which it came from. The GNU License is very different in this regard, whenever you make a change you are legally required to give back those changes to the source code.

Yes.. some may disagree, but I think because of this it lives up to the "free software" ideal better than even GNU. It doesn't require anyone to change, legally or mentally speaking, in order to use software. That's actually what freedom is. Even when the end products may lead to commercialism.

 

[Ravenas]

Apple and Microsoft are some true American success stories. Each have had their up and downs, but right now they are firing on all cylinders.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Now Amazon crossed the milestone too:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...trillion-market-value-milestone-idUSKCN1LK1ZJ