Steve Jobs' exchange with Palm CEO Ed Colligan
 I don't find this email exchange appalling at all.  What's appalling is the naive idealistic reaction here, that reeks of blindness to how business is practiced at scale.<p>I've been involved in this sort of anti-poaching discussion at senior levels before.  It happens all the time, in many industries - particularly in jurisdictions  non-competes are enforceable.  When an executive leaves one place and goes to another (say a CIO or VP), they bring people with them. Often in violation of non-solicitation and non-compete agreements, which are a pain in the ass for everyone to enforce.  So you do what you can to Stop. The. Practice.<p>In the case of California, Jobs didnt have a direct legal avenue to stop this so he wanted to use other threats to stop a competitor.  That seems normal.  If it was not legal, then his lawyers did him no favors.  Immoral?  Not at all.  It's business.<p>The reaction here reminds me of Slashdot circa 98, clucking over leaked Microsoft memos.  The hacker/open source idealism here seems way stronger than that of entrepreneurs or business people. Makes sense I guess.<p>Perhaps people love early stage companies here because they can ignore the dirtier parts of business after you have a product/market fit... like, competition.<p>Competition is dirty and messy.  It's not a kid gloves "lets out innovate each other!" like you're toddlers in a sandbox not allowed to hit each other.  It's about marketing negatively (see Samsung's anti Apple ads), aggressive sales and pricing (see the Nexus 7 sold at cost), stopping poaching (Apple above), and removing supply lines by buying them up (Apple with displays and flash memory).<p>Sure, business isn't JUST those things.  It also is innovation.  Preferably lots of it.  But people here are a rather naive if they think most companies aren't spending over 50% of their time on the former.  Apple is actually unique for their size in how much time it spends innovating rather than, to paraphrase Ray Kroc, "sticking a live hose in your competitor's mouth".