4 ms·

During his tenure at Microsoft, I think Bill could be fairly judged as evil and maniacal at times. He crushed competitors into the ground and punished his enem

During his tenure at Microsoft, I think Bill could be fairly judged as evil and maniacal at times. He crushed competitors into the ground and punished his enemies with reckless abandon. He now seems like a nice guy, in large part because he can afford to be. He has no competitors, and his only agenda is to give away his billions. If I had that much money and was retired, you would rarely find me in a bad mood either.

WalterBright 13y ago
> I think Bill could be fairly judged as evil and maniacal at times. I hear this a lot and I think it is grossly unfair. I lived through those times, and my company (Zortech) competed directly with Microsoft. Microsoft is one tough competitor, no doubt about it. But evil and maniacal is frankly ridiculous. MicroPro, Novell, Lotus, etc., all failed due to their own decisions. For in-depth information, see the book "In Search of Stupidity".
- easytiger 13y ago
  Even back then I never saw gates as a mad tycoon like others seem to. When running a business at the end of the day the non software problem you are trying to solve is not necessarily to make the best thing in the world but to sell the most things and maintain future sales. It is just another problem to be solved along with getting your memory model right and ensuring customers aren't dissatisfied enough to abandon your platform. Of course it comes at the risk of having to allow hurt to other companies but that is the nature of survival.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    If all the did was compete fairly, it would not have been an issue, but they more than once were found to engage in unfair business practices. Such as financially punishing OEMs that opted to offer competing OS's.
    - aquadrop 13y ago
      What else can you name as "unfair business practices"? I'm genuinely interested in the answer.
      - lmm 13y ago
        The bundling that got them convicted of monopoly abuse - including Windows Media Player with windows, so that they could sell a video streaming server for which the client program and browser plugin were already installed (where competitors like real and quicktime had to offer a separate download). Similar story with IE (netscape's server product was actually amazing for the time, with ideas that were only beginning to be adopted ten years later). Selling IBM an OS that they hadn't actually written yet - you could argue no harm no foul, but MS's actions meant IBM was taking on much more risk in that contract than they realized.
      - makomk 13y ago
        They also had an infamous habit of announcing vapourware alternatives to competing products, knowing that many potential customers would hold off buying if they thought a Microsoft-developed alternative was in the works (e.g. PenPoint OS vs Microsoft's Windows for Pen Computing - the latter of which had very minimal functionality when it finally came out).
        WalterBright 13y ago
        I never understood the crying over that. If you have a good product available right now, and you can't sell against a vaporware product that may or may not be available for year(s) in the future, you're simply not good at sales, or your product isn't good. At Zortech, we found selling against vaporware to be easy sales.
- yuhong 13y ago
  On compilers, from http://www.nynaeve.net/?p=105 http://www.nynaeve.net/?p=105 : "This can be seen as a hack (and a violation of abstraction layers; there is intended to be a logical separation between operating system level SEH support, and language level SEH support; this special support in RtlRestoreContext blurs the distinction between the two for C language support with the Microsoft C/C++ compiler). This layering violation is not the most egregious in the x64 exception handling scene, however."
- vidarh 13y ago
  > I hear this a lot and I think it is grossly unfair. Judges thought differently, multiple times.
  - GrinningFool 13y ago
    >> I hear this a lot and I think it is grossly unfair. > Judges thought differently, multiple times. Judges ruled that the practices of the company were illegal. This is a very far stretch from saying "I think Bill [the person] could be fairly judged as evil and maniacal at times."
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Precisely. "Illegal" is a law judgement; "evil and maniacal" is a moral judgement.
justin66 13y ago
> He crushed competitors into the ground and punished his enemies with reckless abandon. He was a big softie! For example, if you think what he did to Netscape was bad, you ought to hear what users of Netscape 4 wanted to do to Netscape...
- yuhong 13y ago
  Ah, the cancellation of "Mariner". That being said, why is it difficult to run more than one version of IE even today?
sliverstorm 13y ago
We can call him "ruthless", but "evil"?

WalterBright 13y ago

> I think Bill could be fairly judged as evil and maniacal at times. I hear this a lot and I think it is grossly unfair. I lived through those times, and my company (Zortech) competed directly with Microsoft. Microsoft is one tough competitor, no doubt about it. But evil and maniacal is frankly ridiculous. MicroPro, Novell, Lotus, etc., all failed due to their own decisions. For in-depth information, see the book "In Search of Stupidity".

easytiger 13y ago
Even back then I never saw gates as a mad tycoon like others seem to. When running a business at the end of the day the non software problem you are trying to solve is not necessarily to make the best thing in the world but to sell the most things and maintain future sales. It is just another problem to be solved along with getting your memory model right and ensuring customers aren't dissatisfied enough to abandon your platform. Of course it comes at the risk of having to allow hurt to other companies but that is the nature of survival.
- vidarh 13y ago
  If all the did was compete fairly, it would not have been an issue, but they more than once were found to engage in unfair business practices. Such as financially punishing OEMs that opted to offer competing OS's.
  - aquadrop 13y ago
    What else can you name as "unfair business practices"? I'm genuinely interested in the answer.
    - lmm 13y ago
      The bundling that got them convicted of monopoly abuse - including Windows Media Player with windows, so that they could sell a video streaming server for which the client program and browser plugin were already installed (where competitors like real and quicktime had to offer a separate download). Similar story with IE (netscape's server product was actually amazing for the time, with ideas that were only beginning to be adopted ten years later). Selling IBM an OS that they hadn't actually written yet - you could argue no harm no foul, but MS's actions meant IBM was taking on much more risk in that contract than they realized.
    - makomk 13y ago
      They also had an infamous habit of announcing vapourware alternatives to competing products, knowing that many potential customers would hold off buying if they thought a Microsoft-developed alternative was in the works (e.g. PenPoint OS vs Microsoft's Windows for Pen Computing - the latter of which had very minimal functionality when it finally came out).
      - WalterBright 13y ago
        I never understood the crying over that. If you have a good product available right now, and you can't sell against a vaporware product that may or may not be available for year(s) in the future, you're simply not good at sales, or your product isn't good. At Zortech, we found selling against vaporware to be easy sales.
yuhong 13y ago
On compilers, from http://www.nynaeve.net/?p=105 http://www.nynaeve.net/?p=105 : "This can be seen as a hack (and a violation of abstraction layers; there is intended to be a logical separation between operating system level SEH support, and language level SEH support; this special support in RtlRestoreContext blurs the distinction between the two for C language support with the Microsoft C/C++ compiler). This layering violation is not the most egregious in the x64 exception handling scene, however."
vidarh 13y ago
> I hear this a lot and I think it is grossly unfair. Judges thought differently, multiple times.
- GrinningFool 13y ago
  >> I hear this a lot and I think it is grossly unfair. > Judges thought differently, multiple times. Judges ruled that the practices of the company were illegal. This is a very far stretch from saying "I think Bill [the person] could be fairly judged as evil and maniacal at times."
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Precisely. "Illegal" is a law judgement; "evil and maniacal" is a moral judgement.

justin66 13y ago

> He crushed competitors into the ground and punished his enemies with reckless abandon. He was a big softie! For example, if you think what he did to Netscape was bad, you ought to hear what users of Netscape 4 wanted to do to Netscape...

yuhong 13y ago
Ah, the cancellation of "Mariner". That being said, why is it difficult to run more than one version of IE even today?

sliverstorm 13y ago

We can call him "ruthless", but "evil"?