{Microsoft didn't steal it either. } Technically, Apple had members on the Xerox design team. Microsoft hired some of them away from Apple, as well as some of Xerox's original programmers. They no more "stole" it than, Amazon.com stole Wall-mart employees a coupe of years back... It's just business as usual. {The person I feel most sorry for is that one hard-working yet clueless programmer who sold his rickety disk operating system to a fledgling Microsoft for peanuts. } The guy who created Unix was contracted by IBM to produce DOS. Unfortunately, he had not signed the contract and when IBM, in a rush to get to market, came to his house to get the contract signed correctly, he was out of town for a few days, and his wife REFUSED to sign in his name - so IBM went to the house down the street, where a young programmer named Bill Gates lived (who had bid on DOS as well, but who's inexperience had cost him the contract), and told him that if he could promise deliver, he had the job. He did, and the rest is history.