@joyride
It seems that the Wrights weren't especially nice people, and in their concern about monetizing their work, they lost first-mover advantage, and probably didn't do the best for their profit.
The evidence for their flights isn't what you'd expect for a modern record attempt, and there were at the time no definitions of what constituted powered flight for them to comply with; but using some form of assistance for take off is surely OK, whether it's JATO, water boost, a ski-jump or just taking off into wind--it's not the same as depending on the residual energy of the launch boost.
Above all, powered flight was bound to happen in the first decade of the twentieth century, whoever got there first.
But history is full of contingencies, and the Wrights lucked out. But it wasn't sheer luck--there's evidence that they started with the best available knowledge (Oscar Chanute does seem to have been a gentleman), and worked at applying it assiduously. They didn't invent the aeroplane, they weren't Corinthians, and they didn't document every stage of the development as well as modern process-oriented management would require ("Sure, you've done good work; but can you prove you've done good work?" They were their own bosses, and didn't have to put up with that sort of BS); but that doesn't prove they were outright liars.
It's great to correct the popular view, but if doubt is cast on the Wrights' priority, that implies that someone else was really first, and we're back with the question of who invented the aeroplane, to which one might as well reply Daedalus. If someone else did get there first, that's great and we should all know it; but there is no real evidence in this thread that "first" would mean anything but "before December 1903".