5 ms·

> Bill and Melinda Gates have done tremendous good in the world, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either crude or uninformed. Their foundation has done a lot

by avar 16y ago

> Bill and Melinda Gates have done tremendous good in the world, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either crude or uninformed. Their foundation has done a lot of good, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Why does it have all that money in the first place? Well, mostly because Microsoft managed to work itself into a monopoly position with dirty tactics, and the proliferation of their own proprietary file formats. This meant that millions of people and organizations had to pay the Microsoft tax, which was later used to start the B&M Gates Foundation. How many millions of US$ would those people have donated to charity if their budgets hadn't been constrained by purchasing Microsoft software? Some of them were probably African countries that could have used that money to buy vaccines 10 years ago. Don't get me wrong, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is doing some good work now, but to only look at their current donations is to only see the tip of the iceberg.

jonah 16y ago
The foundation itself isn't completely blameless. They have some of their n billions invested* in the very companies who's environmental and social policies are are causing harm to people they are trying to help with their clinics, etc. *I heard about this several years ago so would be happy to be told they've changed this. Their response was that the fund management and philanthropic arms of the foundation were firewalled and the former's directive was to simply maximize growth. I find this unfortunate at best.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- _politicalist 16y ago
  It appears that the Gates Foundation works under certain contstraints, dictated of course by the elite family which runs it. For example, they appear to strongly respect intellectual property and corporate profits, as you might expect from a Microsoft founder. (This may take the form of ensuring that companies like Monsanto benefit from aid.) There was an informed article in The Nation which touched upon the undemocratic vision the Gates Foundation allegedly has; people affected by poverty do struggle to fix their own problems in a self-governing way. Elite benefactors like Gates or Soros may conceivably help to strengthen the systems which make it hard to self-govern, along with whatever benefits they accomplish. http://www.thenation.com/article/gates-foundation-and-africas-hunger http://www.thenation.com/article/gates-foundation-and-africa... (Incidentally, I don't see why Gates is considered a particularly predatory businessman. He just happened to be the one who succeeded, as usually happens; and other businesspeople don't like an entity with the resulting market power. He might be a much nicer guy than many of his competitors, for all I know.)
mattmanser 16y ago
This is an extremely naive diatribe. There are few OSS projects that have done anything more than steal ideas from commercial software in terms of innovation. Programming languages are the only place I can think of that OSS is cutting edge. MS pushed the boundaries of software to the extreme. Go look at any of their competitors at the age of their dominance. Man, look at Netscape navigator in its bloated unusable form when IE6 came out. Compare Excel to Lotus 123. Or Outlook to Lotus Notes. MS didn't win because it was evil. It won because it was very, very, very, very, very good. Google is winning now, with its even more extremely closed source software known as google search, because it is very, very, very good. It's just pretending to support OSS. Without actually giving away the crown jewels. And MS still is very good in a lot of fields, OSes being the primary one. Only Apple is a close competitor and it's a lot more expensive. So get off your soapbox and smell reality. The overall benefit MS software has donated to the world is worth many more trillions of dollars than the licenses cost.
- dman 16y ago
  “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime".
  - mattmanser 16y ago
    Perhaps if we'd have taught Africa how to make IE6 they'd not need our our code today. Ah, what a missed opportunity Bill Gates had to solve poverty. Or your point is totally fucking retarded. One or the other... I really can't make the distinction.
  - nickthorn 16y ago
    "Light a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a night. But set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  > Google is winning now, with its even more extremely closed source software known as google search Google search is not closed source as it is a hosted service. It would be if it was redistributed under closed source license. This is why RMS himself said he uses Google. > It's just pretending to support OSS. Without actually giving away the crown jewels. It has not given sources, but Google gave many papers about the technics they use such as map/reduce and compression which enable projects such hadoop, yahoo search and even Bing.
statictype 16y ago
I'm surprised at how high your comment is rated. Bill Gates didn't become rich because Microsoft managed to work itself into a monopoly position with dirty tactics. The whole problem people have with Microsoft is that they abused their monopoly in one area to gain a foothold in another! They already had a virtual monopoly on desktop computers. How did they get there? By having smart people and making really good software that more or less worked everywhere. When Microsoft started becoming evil they were already fully entrenched in the market. How many millions of US$ would those people have donated to charity if their budgets hadn't been constrained by purchasing Microsoft software? Some of them were probably African countries that could have used that money to buy vaccines 10 years ago. Yes, I'm sure that any money left over from a large corporation's IT budget would have gone straight into the donation budget.
- turtle4 16y ago
  Its pretty hard to say that the only way MS leveraged its monopoly was to enter other markets. That may have been the biggest problem, but I doubt it is the 'whole' problem. You really believe that MS didn't gouge consumers on the price of their OS? Or their Office suite? Regardless of your opinions on their specific business practices, I think the OP's point still stands: its difficult at best to laude someone for giving away money that to some extent was derived illegally.
- btilly 16y ago
  Microsoft got into its initial monopoly position because of an "interesting" deal with IBM. Specifically Microsoft got a contract with IBM to deliver a product, turned around and bought the product from another company that had already developed it, and then delivered that to IBM. Microsoft then hired the person who developed said product because they didn't actually have the expertise to support it themselves. See http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa033099.htm http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa033099.htm for confirmation. About charity, Microsoft may have improved, but a few years ago standard operating procedure was for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to tie charitable work to large Microsoft purchases. If a government bought from Microsoft, the foundation would come in and start providing assistance. If the government went to Linux, the foundation would pick up and leave. The use of this tactic has left me with a bad impression of said foundation, despite all of the unquestioningly good work they do. (They may have gut this out more recently. I no longer pay attention to Microsoft now that it is clear that they aren't going to be able to destroy the parts of the IT world that I care about.)

by avar 16y ago

jonah 16y ago

The foundation itself isn't completely blameless. They have some of their n billions invested* in the very companies who's environmental and social policies are are causing harm to people they are trying to help with their clinics, etc. *I heard about this several years ago so would be happy to be told they've changed this. Their response was that the fund management and philanthropic arms of the foundation were firewalled and the former's directive was to simply maximize growth. I find this unfortunate at best.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
_politicalist 16y ago
It appears that the Gates Foundation works under certain contstraints, dictated of course by the elite family which runs it. For example, they appear to strongly respect intellectual property and corporate profits, as you might expect from a Microsoft founder. (This may take the form of ensuring that companies like Monsanto benefit from aid.) There was an informed article in The Nation which touched upon the undemocratic vision the Gates Foundation allegedly has; people affected by poverty do struggle to fix their own problems in a self-governing way. Elite benefactors like Gates or Soros may conceivably help to strengthen the systems which make it hard to self-govern, along with whatever benefits they accomplish. http://www.thenation.com/article/gates-foundation-and-africas-hunger http://www.thenation.com/article/gates-foundation-and-africa... (Incidentally, I don't see why Gates is considered a particularly predatory businessman. He just happened to be the one who succeeded, as usually happens; and other businesspeople don't like an entity with the resulting market power. He might be a much nicer guy than many of his competitors, for all I know.)

mattmanser 16y ago

This is an extremely naive diatribe. There are few OSS projects that have done anything more than steal ideas from commercial software in terms of innovation. Programming languages are the only place I can think of that OSS is cutting edge. MS pushed the boundaries of software to the extreme. Go look at any of their competitors at the age of their dominance. Man, look at Netscape navigator in its bloated unusable form when IE6 came out. Compare Excel to Lotus 123. Or Outlook to Lotus Notes. MS didn't win because it was evil. It won because it was very, very, very, very, very good. Google is winning now, with its even more extremely closed source software known as google search, because it is very, very, very good. It's just pretending to support OSS. Without actually giving away the crown jewels. And MS still is very good in a lot of fields, OSes being the primary one. Only Apple is a close competitor and it's a lot more expensive. So get off your soapbox and smell reality. The overall benefit MS software has donated to the world is worth many more trillions of dollars than the licenses cost.

dman 16y ago
“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime".
- mattmanser 16y ago
  Perhaps if we'd have taught Africa how to make IE6 they'd not need our our code today. Ah, what a missed opportunity Bill Gates had to solve poverty. Or your point is totally fucking retarded. One or the other... I really can't make the distinction.
- nickthorn 16y ago
  "Light a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a night. But set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
patrickaljord 16y ago
> Google is winning now, with its even more extremely closed source software known as google search Google search is not closed source as it is a hosted service. It would be if it was redistributed under closed source license. This is why RMS himself said he uses Google. > It's just pretending to support OSS. Without actually giving away the crown jewels. It has not given sources, but Google gave many papers about the technics they use such as map/reduce and compression which enable projects such hadoop, yahoo search and even Bing.

statictype 16y ago

I'm surprised at how high your comment is rated. Bill Gates didn't become rich because Microsoft managed to work itself into a monopoly position with dirty tactics. The whole problem people have with Microsoft is that they abused their monopoly in one area to gain a foothold in another! They already had a virtual monopoly on desktop computers. How did they get there? By having smart people and making really good software that more or less worked everywhere. When Microsoft started becoming evil they were already fully entrenched in the market. How many millions of US$ would those people have donated to charity if their budgets hadn't been constrained by purchasing Microsoft software? Some of them were probably African countries that could have used that money to buy vaccines 10 years ago. Yes, I'm sure that any money left over from a large corporation's IT budget would have gone straight into the donation budget.

turtle4 16y ago
Its pretty hard to say that the only way MS leveraged its monopoly was to enter other markets. That may have been the biggest problem, but I doubt it is the 'whole' problem. You really believe that MS didn't gouge consumers on the price of their OS? Or their Office suite? Regardless of your opinions on their specific business practices, I think the OP's point still stands: its difficult at best to laude someone for giving away money that to some extent was derived illegally.
btilly 16y ago
Microsoft got into its initial monopoly position because of an "interesting" deal with IBM. Specifically Microsoft got a contract with IBM to deliver a product, turned around and bought the product from another company that had already developed it, and then delivered that to IBM. Microsoft then hired the person who developed said product because they didn't actually have the expertise to support it themselves. See http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa033099.htm http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa033099.htm for confirmation. About charity, Microsoft may have improved, but a few years ago standard operating procedure was for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to tie charitable work to large Microsoft purchases. If a government bought from Microsoft, the foundation would come in and start providing assistance. If the government went to Linux, the foundation would pick up and leave. The use of this tactic has left me with a bad impression of said foundation, despite all of the unquestioningly good work they do. (They may have gut this out more recently. I no longer pay attention to Microsoft now that it is clear that they aren't going to be able to destroy the parts of the IT world that I care about.)