Bill Gates is indeed talented and hard working -- and generous in some ways. He also dumpster-dived to learn how to write good software from looking at other pe

Bill Gates is indeed talented and hard working -- and generous in some ways. He also dumpster-dived to learn how to write good software from looking at other people's code without their explicit permission: https://patch.com/california/losaltos/microsoft-co-founder-paul-allen-recounts-his-days-of-7a8784789a https://patch.com/california/losaltos/microsoft-co-founder-p... "That phase of Allen's life involved taking the bus–sports coat, tie, leather briefcase and all—down to the offices of local computer gurus. "I would boost Bill into dumpsters and we'd get these coffee-stained texts (of computer code)" from behind the offices, grinned Allen."" And MS-DOS is based in part on CP/M's design: "MS-DOS paternity suit settled: Computer pioneer Kildall vindicated, from beyond the grave" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/30/msdos_paternity_suit_resolved/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/30/msdos_paternity_suit... "Last week, a Judge dismissed a defamation law suit brought by Tim Paterson, who sold a computer operating system to Microsoft in 1980, against journalist and author Sir Harold Evans and his publisher Little Brown. The software became the basis of Microsoft's MS-DOS monopoly, and the basis of its dominance of the PC industry. But history has overlooked the contribution of Kildall, who Evans justifiably described as "the true founder of the personal computer revolution and the father of PC software" in a book published three years ago. In a chapter devoted to Kildall in Evans' They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators, Evans related how Paterson "[took] 'a ride on' Kildall's operating system, appropriated the 'look and feel' of [Kildall's] CP/M operating system, and copied much of his operating system interface from CP/M."" If you want to get away with such things, it helps to start rich, of course: http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ "William Henry Gates III made his best decision on October 28, 1955, the night he was born. He chose J.W. Maxwell as his great-grandfather. Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. In some of the later lessons, you will be encouraged to take entrepreneurial risks. You may find it comforting to remember that at any time you can fall back on a trust fund worth many millions of 1998 dollars." And to have free legal advice from his father (a lawyer). Contrast all that with the hypocritical letter Bill Gates wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists "As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?" So wrote the millionaire dumpster diver who could afford to write free software his whole life -- but chose instead to resell an OS that ripped-off someone else's hard work (one reason IBM may have wanted to keep an arms-length distance from MS-DOS instead of buying it outright). Those are hypocritical words to anyone who knows more of the story, but brilliant marketing -- including the rhetorical deception about how much time free software developers might have (such as ones at universities or government labs or students like, then, Linus Torvalds). [Stuff I previously mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15772233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15772233 ] To be clear: just because Bill Gates did stuff like that in his teens and 20s does not mean he would do stuff like that now. He many have grown as a person in many ways over the past few decades (e.g. the Gates Foundation).