I'm sorry, but to me the notion that an idea for a website site is something you can steal sounds absolutely ridiculous. Did Larry & Sergey steal the idea of a search engine? Did Hacker News steal the idea of a news site where stories are rated by recency + popularity? Did Etsy steal the idea of an online marketplace? I can't believe that on a site like hacker news, where virtually everybody is trying to do what somebody else has done only a bit better, people would be whining about the notion that one can own idea that others could steal through better execution.
That's not really what the FB vs ConnectU issue is about. ConnectU wasn't upset because Mark took "their idea." By all accounts he was actively working on their product.
So it's not like the Winklevoss brothers approached Mark, pitched him, and he thought, "I can do this better." He actually went to work on their product and then, later, while he was ostensibly working on ConnectU, launched a competing product.
That is, it's not "he stole my idea!" It's "he took our code and confidential information and used the opportunity we gave him to harm our business."
Anyone can have ideas. Few can act on them. Inspiration is easy, while implementation is hard.
I am not whining because I am into hardware, not software. Thankfully, in my field a couple of teenagers could never put a 20-year veteran out of business.
I don't think anyone is claiming that Zuckerberg stole the social network website idea. The crux of the matter is whether he stole the code. On the other hand, coding is easy, so why steal it, right?
