| HN Mirror

This one is different from the other source I recall. It could have been someone else's oral history and she was mentioned. This is what she says in her own OH:

-- [emph added: p.12 of https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...] --

"When Stewart Brand came into PARC and there was a book Cybernetics 2? [II cybernetic frontiers], half of it was about the "secret" company and Stewart had pictures of PARC and so there had been publicity that I guess hadn’t been properly signed off on. And so there had been a bit of a “You don’t get to publish for awhile” period. I think Alan took it too seriously. He didn’t like having his hand slapped. We did start publishing again more in the ’76 timeframe including the personal dynamic media paper that Alan and I did for IEEE Computer Software. I wanted to go to corporate and ask for permission and it was a little risky because you didn’t know what would come back. There’s no reason for them to say yes.

Lucky for me, between the time I suggested it and actually asking, Xerox’s venture group had bought a lot of equity in a little fledgling computer company that wasn’t doing very well called Apple Computer and they had arranged for the Apple executives and then later the Lisa programming team, to come for a visit.

I kind of parlayed that into, “Well you’re willing to give it away. You’re not interested.” And I wrote this motivator about why we should be able to publish it all because we were planning to write a book and we were planning to have this community implementation event. I think it went to one of the principals at the venture group who then asked Jeff Rulifson his opinion. Jeff was on some special leave from PARC to corporate and he wrote “Oh sure, publish all this”. So I had it [the permission] on paper."

-- end --

I don't recall hearing about this Xerox venture group and its "lot of equity" in Apple. But ..

- source: https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/corporate-venture... --

"Xerox had had an active CVC program since the 1960s, operating an internally managed fund that invested in some of the most legendary figures in Silicon Valley, including Raymond Kurzweil and Steve Jobs. Kurzweil got his start in technology when Xerox invested in his first company, Kurzweil Applied Intelligence Inc., in 1982, to develop a computer that could transcribe spoken English. The idea behind the investment was to create technology that would increase demand for Xerox’s printing products when it ultimately hit the market.

When Apple released its revolutionary Macintosh computer, some observers claimed that it had commercialized technologies first developed at Xerox PARC, such as the mouse, windows, and icons, even dating the origin of the supposed copying to a 1979 visit to the lab by Jobs and other Apple employees — the tour is considered a seminal event in Silicon Valley lore. Although the accusation that Apple outright copied its ideas for user interface from Xerox is generally refuted today, the revelations stung Xerox’s management. The company was eventually spurred into rethinking its CVC program in an effort to better capitalize on the company’s languishing in-house technologies."

-- end --