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Hopefully we can do better than taking a quote out of context, interpreting it literally and drawing false contradictions. When one takes a whole idea and distills it into a short phrase like this, it ends up sounding short and sweet but information is inevitably lost. It is fallacious to attempt to unpack it and interpret it under different context.

That stealing which is good is at the conceptual level.

When someone has a document that shows a hundred different things which are developed over years of research copied blatantly without investing a minute, something needs to be done really.

How is that different than Jobs' "stealing" in any way?

Samsung copied the iPhone. They didn't "steal" its essence and make something better.

Cheaper but otherwise the same is better.

Sure. If your world view is really narrow.

The issue with knockoffs is that they discourage medium to longer term investment in favour of a short term race to the bottom. Which is not 'better' for anyone.

Exactly. Once that is gone the ability to amortize development costs over the course of a product cycle disappears. It's the tragedy of the commons.