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Bill Gates, Hero
It's hard to believe we once saw Bill Gates as the pie-splattered villain and others as the idealists.
- pstuart 16y agoMy understanding is that it should be: Melinda Gates, Hero. When she connected the plight of many of the world's children to that of their own he got it.
- brudgers 16y agoI'd agree. Then I remember Clippy.
- ziweb 16y agoBill Gates is the new hero because Steve Jobs is the new villain.
- CapitalistCartr 16y agoBill can be a hero because the stranglehold Microsoft had on computer development is gone with the advent of the Web as the platform. No one is afraid of the big bad MS any more.
- DrJokepu 16y agoHow? I mean, could you elaborate that idea please? I don't see how Mr. Jobs being unpopular in some circles would imply that Mr. Gates became popular.
- jbooth 16y agoEveryone loves character arcs and comeback stories. Creating new villains means there's room for the old villain to be rehabilitated. Even if neither of them have changed a lot as people over the last 10 years, the media perception becomes the reality.
- pedalpete 16y agoI agree with you Doc, this isn't a zero sum game. However, as Jobs is so closely tied to the recent success of Apple, and Gates is still seen as Microsoft even though he hasn't been an employee for many years.
- mtts 16y agoHe's still an employee, but he's no longer the CEO.
- Keyframe 16y agoBill Gates = { it celebrity, celebrity, rich, geek god, arch rivalry 'Mac vs PC', extreme public philanthropy, ...} Steve Jobs = { it celebrity, celebrity, rich, geek god, arch rivalry 'Mac vs PC', ...} Intersection = Bill Gates ∩ Steve Jobs = { it celebrity, celebrity, rich, geek god, arch rivalry 'Mac vs PC' } Difference = { extreme public philanthropy } So this difference goes hand in hand with arch rivalry 'Mac vs PC'. aka 'My penis is bigger than yours' to everyone but the subjects themselves.
- rbanffy 16y agoFor some extremely narrow definitions of "geek god", that is...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- edkennedy 16y agoI think he's villanized because of his main product, Windows. It suffers from the same plight Bill himself suffers as mentioned in the article. Awkwardness.
- lotharbot 16y agoAs much as this seems like snark, it's a fair observation. Bill Gates is often seen as a villain because of the late 1990s behavior of Microsoft and the quality of some of their flagship products (Windows and IE). It can be hard to separate perceptions of Bill Gates the man/philanthropist from Bill Gates the businessman. Perceptions of Bill Gates are colored by BSoD's, IE's non-compliance to standards, Frontpage creating pages that only rendered in IE, and awkward conventions and interfaces in several popular pieces of software. (I personally think very highly of Bill and Melinda Gates for their charitable work.)
- stackthat 16y agoGet over yourselves , have you used *nix systems in 90s as desktops? If you not you can't compare Windows's quality with something else. OSX wasn't even properly exist.
- pohl 16y ago"NEXTSTEP is probably the most respected piece of software on the planet." -- Byte Magazine, October 1992 I used it during that decade on an x86 desktop, on a SPARC laptop made by Tadpole, and on an HP PA-RISC "gecko" workstation. It was awesome.
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- shotmaker 16y agoeugenicists == good citizen?
- edw519 16y agoWhy do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy? Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake. Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. Sure he was smart and he worked hard, but he was no smarter and worked no harder than many of the rest of us. And what did he do with these fabulous once-in-a-lifetime gifts? He fucked anyone who got in his way, always to the benefit of Microsoft, and usually to the detriment of the industry. When others wrote better code, he called his lawyers. When other developers wanted to collaborate, he stole their intellectual property. When customers or vendors balked, he crushed them. And when the citizens saw how unfair it all was and took action, he called his lobbyists. So now maybe he wants to be like Andrew Carnegie in his next act, conveniently forgetting all the lives destroyed in the hope of "giving it all back". If so, good. I really try to keep upbeat and optimistic in my posts here at hn, but I also understand how much we have forgotten, and sometimes I just can't resist. Every time I read about Bill Gates worship, I can vomit. Sometimes I really wonder how much better things would be for all of us hackers is he had just gone to law school and left our industry to develop as it could have. </rant> Oooh, that feels better. Now back to work.
- ariels 16y agoThe same thing can be said of Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, and most of the tech titans. Sounds like you just have something against powerful people.
- zzzmarcus 16y agoBill Gates did bad things. Jobs, Ellison, most tech titans do/did bad things. edw519 does not like Bill Gates worship. Therefore, edw519 has something against powerful people.
- naner 16y agoThere's nothing wrong with criticizing how powerful people choose to wield and maintain their power. You are right that many of the same things can be said about Jobs and Ellison. I don't think anyone here would argue that they are saints.
- Cushman 16y agoMetonymy.
- siglesias 16y agoThe interesting fact that is often left out of these Gates-as-philanthropist v. Jobs-as-salesman arguments is that Jobs has 1/10 the wealth that Bill Gates has, if that, even though Apple is now worth more than Microsoft. So if this is a simple comparison of allocation of wealth we find that Jobs simply hasn't taken the money (look at his paycheck v. Apple's cash holdings for crying out loud). And socially how effective is charity relative to giving it to the market? I'm not sure, but it's open to debate. So does two decades of merciless greed followed by a decade of giving some of that money away constitute heroism? To an extent, yes. But I think we ought to give simply taking a lower cash holding a better look also.
- qq66 16y agoJobs' wealth is lower than Gates because Apple raised more money than Microsoft did early on, and because he sold all his stock when he left Apple and is now compensated in stock options rather than in founders' stock.
- siglesias 16y agoHe sold his stock in protest over being fired--again, for principle, not money. With $46B cash and short term holdings in the bank, I'm sure shareholders wouldn't bat much of an eye if Jobs compensated himself with a little bit more than $1/year, as Ellison and many other tech execs do. Jobs doesn't take that cash. The last point I'm going to make is that it's probably immaterial to the argument the exact cause of the disparity. The fact that people point at Jobs and accuse him of not being more philanthropic indicates that they are ignorant of his cash position.
- kenjackson 16y agoSelling your stock over being fired is not a principled stand. At least not in the conventional way of thinking about it. Plus he has on occassion been labelled the highest paying CEO in the world, due to his stock options. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/12/lead_07ceos_Steven-P-Jobs_HEDB.html http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/12/lead_07ceos_Steven-P-Job... And in any case, most CEOs don't make a HUGE salary. Jobs would probably get paid $750k. The fact that he doesn't make this money is (a) hardly a dent in his wallet and (b) doesn't really make any effect on wealth allocation.
- kmfrk 16y agoThere's an idiom where I come from. Roughly translated: When the Devil gets old, he joins the abbey.
- m3mb3r 16y ago>> Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy? There are two separate aspects here, professional and personal. Silicon Valley judges people based on their professional acumen and practices. And Gates did not please everybody in this department. And the other aspect, yes, people in tech do admire his humanitarian efforts. It's just that mixing two aspects of a personality and trying to come up with an overall score does not work.
- kirpekar 16y agoOff Topic: Glenn welcome to HN! Glad to see you here. We bought our first house using Redfin in 2007 and were very happy customers!
- known 16y agoI'd say Bill Gates is a true and successful capitalist.
- cwb 16y agoHow come no one talks about the loss of innovation Microsoft have incurred on the world? What if Windows were NeXT or Unix? What if Bill Gates had tried really hard to create the best tools possible, rather than the most profitable software? What if the world had run on Unix in the two decades since Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT machine to create the web? Might we have had a 1% increase in annual productivity (mainly from better innovation, not only direct efficiency improvements)? We'll never know of course; but you don't have to be crazy to think so.
- tzs 16y agoWhy are you blaming Microsoft for what IBM did? Microsoft's plan was for the world to run on Unix, with Microsoft selling Unix software--they wanted to be a tools and language company, and were tired of having every different manufacturer have its own operating system. Gates tried to get IBM to pick a processor for the IBM PC that would support Unix, but they weren't interested. Your hypothetical 1% productivity increase has to be balanced against the productivity loss of dealing with a bunch of different Unix variants on a bunch of different processors. The dominance of Windows surely delayed innovation in operating systems, but arguably spurred innovation in applications.
- cwb 16y agoSimply because I think they had the opportunity to create a great OS (whatever its relation to Unix) and chose not to. My point was that I think DOS/Windows hindered the innovation in applications -- not necessarily their complexity or size -- but their utility. I have the option to use big, feature-rich Windows applications, but mostly prefer smaller command-line based tools. I'm clearly in a minority here though, so maybe I am crazy.. :)
- zandorg 16y agoTed Nelson said the world of computing would be different if AT&T hadn't charged $50,000 for a Unix license (yes, that's per machine!).
- nitrogen 16y ago
- fady 16y agowhy is redfin (a real estate company) blogging about bill gates? weird...
- arvinjoar 16y agoExcuse me, but why is raising taxes on the rich a good thing? If the rich feel that they have too much then there's always charity. Most of the people on this site should know that there isn't a limited pie of wealth, and you shouldn't punish those who enlarge the pie.
- kitchen 16y agoTax the wealthy to pay for education, but don't worry about Microsoft dodging licensing taxes by operating out of Nevada, noooo... http://boingboing.net/2010/04/23/microsoft-wins-its-1.html http://boingboing.net/2010/04/23/microsoft-wins-its-1.html http://microsofttaxdodge.com/2010/09/microsofts-nevada-tax-dodge-much-larger-than-previously-estimated.html http://microsofttaxdodge.com/2010/09/microsofts-nevada-tax-d... tax the wealthy, so long as it's not him. Now, to be fair, he is a huge philanthropist and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does some amazing work, but praise what you preach, Microsoft needs to start paying its dues.
- tzs 16y agoI'm curious. Do you personally arrange your affairs to maximize your taxes? If not, then why do you think businesses should do so?
- kevin_morrill 16y agoGlenn has it wrong. Without a doubt Bill's creations at Microsoft are far more important than what he's doing now. I prefer the capitalist Gates to the egalitarian one.
- seldo 16y agoTo me Bill Gates will always be a modern-day Rockefeller: he clawed and trampled his way to the top, then once he was there he gave away his money -- a lot of it, to be sure -- and will always be remembered for that, rather than the ugly methods he used to get it. It's laudable when somebody gives so freely and I don't want to take away from that, but I find it hard to view him charitably because I know that even now, this is all about him, making him feel better about himself. Many others sacrificed much more for the good of others without having to tread so heavily.
- Kilimanjaro 16y agoSo, Dick Cheney decides to give away all the billions he made (wars, corruption, oil cartels) and discovers the cure for cancer and super vaccines for all children of the world. Good. It is ok to rape half of the world for the good of the rest. That makes you an instant hero.
- aik 16y agoThis kind of logic doesn't make sense. I'd love to find a word for it. No one has simultaneously done good and bad like that. If a person does bad, then change their views or themselves, and proceeds to do good wholeheartedly, then good, I'm happy about their actions. Why do people have to criticize stuff like this? Learn to forgive. Focus on what's being done now instead of just being upset about the past. I'm sure all the Bill Gates hate affected him some back in the day (and apparently now too), but it's very doubtful that he cares all too much what other people think or he wouldn't have accomplished much, and still wouldn't be accomplishing much today.
- lefstathiou 16y agoI am rather grateful for Gates' contribution to the software industry. Standardizing the development environment was monumental toward facilitating innovation in software development. Imagine if Steve Jobs controlled the industry with as much power that Gates did, how much different would the world be? While I dont like to deal in "IF's," if we judge people/organizations by their actions, Microsoft has always been a relatively open environment whereas today Apple continues to tyranically control their platform. Seeing Apple rule would have sucked for everyone.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoOn the other hand OS X on the Mac is a relatively robust and usable platform and Windows on the PC still sucks for many users (I'm two days into a Windows rebuild at the moment). It's swings and roundabouts. Gates and MS made good calls and they made bad calls, Jobs is the same. For me I think Bill did OK, while I can imagine some using that sort of power in a more altruistic way, I can also see many doing far far worse things with it.
- Bricejm 16y agoBill Gates is the ultimate example of what's explained in the book 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell. Success is usually a combination of hard work & luck.
- shortformblog 16y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrJBY2l1MQQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrJBY2l1MQQ For what it's worth, Gates has been getting a lot of crap in the political sphere for this statement he made a couple of months ago. Glenn Beck's site, The Blaze, has been ripping him for his stance seemingly favoring "death panels." I lean on the side of the blog post, even if his company's quality (as has been noted in the comments) has been downright abhorrent.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- bhoung 16y agoFirst comment on HN after lurking for a year or so. It does irk me that people who obtain their wealth by means of sitting at the top of a monopoly can be praised by giving away the money that they did not have to work so hard for without others giving second thought to how the person arrived in that position in the first place. Sure it was hard to get to the monopoly position in the first place, but what happened after?
- sliverstorm 16y agoTwitter? For Nobel Peace Prize? That's the first I've heard about that, and I'm not sure I like the idea.
- Eruc 16y agoThe man is the greatest philanthropist of our time. He's doing more for the world than everyone commenting here combined, to some outrageous exponent. Decry the man's business practices, but at the end of the day it was a means to an end. He's taking his wealth and spending it wisely on charity. Further, he's convincing other billionaires to do the same. I say we leave his tenure at Microsoft in the past and focus on the stuff that will truly be his legacy: helping mankind. And for that, I say, good for you Mr. Gates.
- patrickgzill 16y agoThe first thing you do in real life, not in fantasy blogger-land, once you are able to is go back and apologize to the guys you stomped on along the way. I am talking about STAC, Gary Kildall's family, etc. Also perhaps an effort at MSFT to reverse the culture of lying and deceit that even now permeates their marketing. I see no evidence of Gates doing that. Self-reflection would be required for that to happen. In some respects I see Zuckerberg following the same path.
- RuadhanMc 16y agoI suppose Bill Gates was responsible for the death of Princess Di as well? Britney Spears 3rd album too. Not to mention Hanson and Take That. And all those Hugh Grant films. Sooo bad. My point? No point really, just adding to the existing rubbish on this thread.
- jeisc 16y agosteve robs and bill takes
- brudgers 16y agoPerhaps Silicon Valley has never quite embraced Bill Gates because Microsoft is not part of Silicon Valley. Microsoft's success in Redmond doesn't fit with the Silicon Valley narrative that ties creativity to geography. In other words Microsoft's success challenges the value of Silicon Valley's terroir. It goes against the brand. That's not to say that geography doesn't play a role - it's hard to imagine a Microsoft based out of Bentonville.