Elmo,

Sure the primary reason for a business to exist is to make money, but: 1) there are legitimate and illegitimate ways of making money, and 2) there are other good reasons for a business to exist besides just to make a profit.

Regarding the first point, in my opinion, making money by stealing someone else’s ideas is not a legitimate basis for a business. In Microsoft’s case, that is essentially what they have done. I would speculate that MsDOS, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and Windows would comprise some 90% of Microsoft’s income base over the last twenty years. Yet Microsoft did not really develop ANY of these products! They (of course) would never say that they “stole” these items. I believe that their favorite euphemism is “reverse engineer.”

If you are skeptical of the fact that Microsoft has ‘reverse engineered’ essentially all of their major products, check it out for yourself. For example, as I stated on a prior page, in the extremely important Federal lawsuit of Apple vs Microsoft several years ago, Microsoft officials conceded, under oath, that most of the Windows operating system had been copied from the Mac operating system. If you would like to find out even more, here is relatively brief, but an extraordinarily detailed history of Bill Gates and Microsoft (September 2002), and another.

If you would like to keep arguing, I would be happy to prove my point in even more detail.

Bill Gates may've lied because he didn't want a mess with apple and just let them win the lawsuit... Since he has a large amount of money anyways

Meh. Large ammount of money says nothing. Now, double that order...
Hmmm I might drop charges...