Comment by icecreampain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by icecreampain | Hacker News Reader

I'm having a very hard time being as enthusiastic about Bill Gates and his philanthropy as the rest of y'all are. I keep thinking about how he ran Microsoft during the 90's: ruthlessly to the point of being found guilty of abusing his monopoly by the DOJ.

I liken him to a mafia boss, donating money to charity after having amassed a fortune extorting and threatening people: can the money still be considered an honest donation or a PR effort to make ensure that the mafia boss is remembered in better terms than "antisocial criminal"?

Sorry, Bill. You may be far richer than I'll ever be, but my money is made honestly. I wasn't born rich, haven't built my whole empire on other people's work (QDOS was bought, Windows comes from OS/2, etc) and I haven't been found guilt of a crime by the DOJ.

Also: sorry people dying of diseases, that I can help y'all by being rich enough to buy small islands. The little, honest man is such a powerless pawn in today's money-centric society.

Here's an interesting hypothetical -- if Bill Gates had been less ruthless in extracting the most money he could during his heyday as Microsoft CEO in the 90s, would he have been able to save less people dying of Malaria today?

To put it another way, if everyone has bought less Microsoft products total throughout the company's history, what else would they have spent their money on? Maybe Gates' whole career was one huge egotistical venture into believing he could spend the world's money better than they could, and he saw his role at Microsoft as simply bringing that about in the most efficient way possible. I can't find many tenable reasons to disagree with that on a moral standpoint -- he has clearly done more good with his fortune than anybody else in recent memory.

There's no evidence Gates ever extorted or threatened anybody.

I also don't understand why anyone has a problem with Microsoft buying QDOS. Windows predates OS/2, too.

I admire Gates for turning his efforts towards solving some of the great problems of today, and succeeding.

I consider Bill Gates to be the modern equivalent of Andrew Carnegie. Both good and bad.

I can recognize the one without forgetting the other.

Exactly Andrew Carnegie sounds right.

As a business man, Gates was ruthless building his empire, but he will eventually do more good in areas that ultimately more important than computers.

When did Carnegie ship sub-standard steel the way MSFT shipped sub-standard software? The Bessemer process he invested in produced steel of higher quality.

EDIT: my point is, one guy advanced the state of the art and the other retarded the state of the art...

The fact that the parallel is not exact does not mean that it is not illuminating.

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