Gates did steal a part of Xerox’s OS to use in Windows during a visit at IBM
The story I’ve heard multiple times here in Silicon Valley was that Bill Gates visited Xerox PARC just like Steve Jobs did. Plus, Bill & Steve were tryin’ to play nice during some phase of the Mac development, Bill got a demo of a prototype and one of the remarks of the technician during the demo let loose the whole game.
Bill: That mouse is cool. Is it a lot of hardware?
Technician: Nahh, it’s mostly software.
Within 3 days, that technician was fired directly by Steve Jobs.
Of course, it’s just a rumor.
Xerox PARC was not interested in a GUI for computers and both Gates and Jobs took what Xerox gave them for free to create Apple OS and Windows.
Why it is said that Bill Gates stole MS-DOS from Gary Kildall and GUI from Xerox ...
https://www.quora.com/Why-it-is-said-that-Bill-Gates-stole-MS-DOS-from-Gary-Kildall-and-GUI-from-Xerox-PARC#:~:text=M%20answer%20views-,Untrue.,create%20Apple%20OS%20and%20Windows.