The problem with that analogy is that these companies didn't gut the MIT AI lab, especially at the level of actual AI researchers vs. the systems people who bui

The problem with that analogy is that these companies didn't gut the MIT AI lab, especially at the level of actual AI researchers vs. the systems people who built and maintained ITS, MACLISP, the Lisp Machine and the Chaosnet (MIT's first LAN). Per https://web.archive.org/web/20140401022259/http://danweinreb.org/blog/rebuttal-to-stallmans-story-about-the-formation-of-symbolics-and-lmi/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140401022259/http://danweinreb... for Symbolics and my memory as an LMI employee: Tom Knight (from MIT AI Lab) Jack Holloway (from MIT AI Lab) David Moon (half-time as MIT AI Lab) Howard Cannon (from MIT AI Lab) Mike McMahon (from MIT AI Lab) Plus Richard Greenblatt for LMI. While some of these people did some actual AI work (and that included Richard Stallman), they were primarily systems people who developed the infrastructure AI research needed prior to industry adopting the these sorts of things like large physical memories (one million dollars ... er, 9-bit bytes), personal workstations, LANs, etc. ADDED: People really wanted and needed Lisp Machines (Danny Hillis was quite distressed LMI's weren't available when he needed them for Thinking Machines), way beyond what the AI Lab could build, let alone how improper it would have been for them to get into that business, so the commercialization of it was pretty much inevitable, be it on a shoestring, later rescued by TI for LMI, or via the healthy VC market back then for Symbolics.