I feel like this quote gets misused a bit by software people as a post hoc justification for selfish behaviors. The takeaway becomes that it is OK to steal, or to present "stolen" or communally developed ideas as emanating from one person's ego.

There is another reading possible that promotes humility. The notion that you didn't get there by yourself. That you took good ideas from other sources. We should be free, open, and quick to admit it.

I very much agree with you! It is a bit of a backhanded compliment, but is ultimately ingratiating our predecessors.

Humility doesn't buy you a house in Silicon Valley.

I'm reminded of the version of this quote which appeared in the TV movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley", which features this exchange...

Gates: Good artists copy, great artists steal. Ballmer: Oh yeah, who said that? Gates: shrug Some artist.

TL;DR:

1. It isn't a Picasso quote

2. The source of the quote, T.S. Eliot's _The Sacred Wood_, literally suggests the opposite intent: "...bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest..."

Eliot seems to be saying good poets steal content not from the original author, but from the original context. Bad poets would be unable to transform the things they imitate.

I always appreciated this one.

To copy an idea, you try to replicate it, to steal an idea, you have to make it your own.

I wonder why the exact words from Adams and Eliot were modified over time by others. Was it malicious (to serve a narrative) or was it an updated reinterpretation, given that English is brittle and the meanings and connotations of words change over time, demanding such revisions for precision.

I think it's usually because memory is faulty and rewrites things, often into a form that's easier to remember. Basically the quotes get polished into proverbs over the years. And of course the attributions get overwritten with catchier ones as well (Davenport -> Picasso).

Polishing seems like a big factor to me. The modern version is much snappier than "immature poets imitate; mature poets plagiarize"

As a meta comment, I am enjoying the QI posts appearing on HN occasionally. Don't think I used to see them a lot, though maybe I wasn't paying attention.

"Just don't steal my stuff"

- Everybody that uses this quote

... and even better artists invent/create/channel new ideas.

Why is that possibility completely ignored?

I suspect that it's related to the promotion of mediocrity.