[electroly]

> in return for giving Xerox the _opportunity_ to invest in Apple, wow

You're being sarcastic but this would have been the most lucrative thing Xerox ever did in its entire corporate life, by far, if it had held onto the stock. This was a really good deal in hindsight. Indeed, it would have been better to liquidate Xerox and put all the proceeds into Apple stock; I don't think anybody argues that Xerox could have made as much hay as Apple did with the technology, even in the best of scenarios. It couldn't have known that at the time, of course.

[MrAureliusR]

Hindsight is 20/20 -- at the time it must have seemed like a slap in the face to the researchers who opposed the demo. Not only do we have to show them the tech, they want money from us too?

[pjmlp]

By the way Apple was going on the late 1990's, Xerox would have sold their stocks by then.

My graduation thesis was porting a NeXTSTEP visualisation framework into Windows, because my supervisor wanted to get rid of his Cube.

It might seem great now, but in those days, Apple and NeXT future wasn't looking rosy.