[megablahblah]

I don't completely agree with you. You need good ideas, and you need to be able to execute them properly.

An alternate quote could easily be "If Zuckerberg had come up with the idea of Facebook on his own, then he would have come up with the idea of Facebook on his own" and the Winkelvosses wouldn't have had even a weak argument to put forth. Zuckerberg's original execution was more along hot or not, correct? And it wasn't until he had input from the Winkelvosses that he solidified something closer to the current Facebook. That's an important contribution. Whether it deserves any legal or financial reward is another story, but you can't just ignore the importance of an idea.

And I am confident in assuming that Zuckerberg also did not come up with his modern mission of Facebook all by himself, for it to be a social, informal version of Google search (for lack of a better description). Without that pivotal idea, Facebook would die or be dead already, just as MySpace has died.

Not everyone can figure out how to code so easily. That's why you have contract work.

[enjo]

I don't think it "another story", I think it cuts to the heart of the question. What constitutes a business? It is merely the functional aspects? Or is it (as I believe) inherently tied to the larger vision?

To me it's the latter. Successful startups are built at the junction of motivation, skill, and vision. Zuckerberg, as far as I can tell, had the first two... but the third was certainly influenced (if not outright stolen) by his interaction with ConnectU. The twins made a tremendous contribution to Facebook, and were rewarded by (as far as I can tell) fraud on the part of Zuckerberg.

That's most definitely worthy of compensation. I still think they sold out for far too little really.

[marknutter]

Tell me exactly what was unique about the idea of Facebook.

It could be summed up in three words: MySpace for Harvard. That's not an idea, that's an obvious conclusion.

I don't argue that you don't need good ideas. I argue that good ideas are a dime a dozen. I argue that no matter how good an idea is, if you can't execute, it's not going to be worth anything.