This is an interesting story that you probably have heard I want to share. Holmes was a terrible business leader and was the downfall of her company. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were geniuses in their own right, in that they knew how to be successful while towing the line. It could have ended very badly for them as well if it were not for forsaken luck.
No Gates actually did not copy the source code, but when IBM approached him as a customer that wanted to buy his operating system for their new personal computer he sold it to them. Problem is he sold them a product that did not exist at all, and signed a contract of purchase orders on a software that was a total fabricated lie. So Bill Gates actually bought a software company that was located down the road from Microsoft known as Q-DOS, which was essentially a clone of CP/M. Then he just changed the name to MSDOS and the rest is history.
Steve Jobs did the same exact thing. When he wanted the software for his company, he purchased a clone of Xerox and renamed it OSX. No they were not the same source code and not complete copies like I said, but they towed the line just enough. Today with stringent copyright protection in the digital world they would probably be sued for making a clone and stealing ideas, and in this climate Steve Jobs and Bill Gates would be labeled as fraud artists and probably sent to prison.
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs themselves were not the best programmers or computer wizards. They were just a savvy bussinessmen that used their oppurtunties to take ideas from other people who did not see the bigger picture. In fact most successful leaders in buisness have done exactly this. In contrast when I read that Elizabeth Holmes was caught using blood-test-analysis machines made from other companies and modifying them, after claiming to investors and customers that she was making her own it reminded me of a very similiar story. She did this to buy time, because at the time Walgreens signed a deal with the company they had not produced a working product yet. Maybe the only reason she is being charged with fraud is because she did not get away with it. Thanks for reading this article!
