Our grandchildren deserve a future without the vendor lock-in and anticompetitive behavior that gave Bill Gates the fortune he is currently using to attempt to whitewash his legacy.
Who gives a shit about anticompetitive behavior in comparison to saving human lives from a preventable disease? Talk about missing the forest for the trees. It's so miserable to talk about positive actions these days, because it's verboten to focus on that when there are negatives to point out.
What does a "high paying career" have to do with "the future our grandchildren deserve" unless the goal is to produce the future Bill Gates wants. The future our grandchildren deserve is one where they're not stratified by their income such that "high paying careers"(read: tech careers, which just so happen to be what bill gates company profits off an excess of) are the only path for them to be "successful".
The idea that bill gates has done a "insane amount of good" is laughable because the "insane amount of good" he does for some reason never conflicts with the goals of Microsoft. "Missing the forest for the trees" would be ignoring the pattern of his decision and instead saying "he's done an insane amount of good, why are you criticizing him?"
Are the efforts to combat Malaria also somehow part of a corporate agenda?
There's an overwhelming amount of evidence that Gates was a ruthless and all around terrible human being back in the days he was running Microsoft. For example, there's the story of how Gates tried to screw his partner Paul Allen (who working hard to deliver DOS 2.0 while also fighting cancer) out of his stake in the company. [1]
In Paul's own words:
One evening in late December 1982, I heard Bill and Steve speaking heatedly in Bill’s office and paused outside to listen in. It was easy to get the gist of the conversation. They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they’d been thinking about this for some time.
Unable to stand it any longer, I burst in on them and shouted, “This is unbelievable! It shows your true character, once and for all.” I was speaking to both of them, but staring straight at Bill. Caught red-handed, they were struck dumb. Before they could respond, I turned on my heel and left.
Don't take my word on it, read up for yourself. I can't find any stories from the early days of Microsoft that paint Gates in a positive light. His only skill was being insanely opportunistic.
If if this the way Gates treats his friends, I don't want to hear about all of the good he's doing in the world. I don't believe the end justifies the means. There are plenty of people in the world worth looking up to, Gates isn't one of those people.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371608/Bill-Gates-...
These aren't changes of heart. They're worried about their legacy. How history will view them. The same thing driving people like him to donate and found charities is the same thing that drove him to behave the ways he did with Microsoft.
I mean, good on him that he refocused his energies. But don't fool yourself into thinking he's changed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...
I get the impression Epstein met a ton of who's-whos, which makes it easy to generate a ton of click-baity "guilt by association" type articles. I.E. "Hey did you know that <controversial public figure> <met/dined/visited/flew> with Epstein?". Guaranteed views, little substance.
Again, not a Gates fan.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-bill-gates-epst...
Melinda met Epstein once in 2013 and said that she "wanted to see who this man was". [1] Of course her spider-sense was tingling in the presence of a known predator. The meeting cemented things in her mind, and as a woman/wife she didn't understand why Bill continued to meet with him.
Bill of course had no problem with Epstein. Gates regularly put aside any sense of morals/ethics for his own selfish financial interests. There was money to be raised here.
Melinda's main problem with Bill was mainly his character, multiple affairs, etc. Combined with other things (like his decision to do business with Epstein), she eventually came to the conclusion she couldn't trust Bill any longer. Not surprising, given what we know about Bill's ruthlessness and general inability to stand by his word.
I'm all for Bill bashing, but there doesn't appear to be a smoking gun here, just a lot of clickbaity speculation. I'm open to any evidence to the contrary, but all I can find is that Bill met Epstein several times, flew on Epstein's plane once, and he never visited Epstein's private island.
I worry that Gates misdeeds are being diluted with time and good PR, and he'll simply be remembered as the guy that did a ton of good (with some unsubstantiated allegations of misbehavior, which of course all dog all powerful people), and not for the person he actually was.
As they say, history is written by the winners.
[1] https://people.com/human-interest/melinda-french-gates-did-n...
I can forgive the stolen money, even credit him for how he's using his loot [2], but he hasn't lifted a finger to undo the damage he did to software freedom - our freedom. Objectively, that makes him hostile to any non-corporate entity.
[1] Acquired by underhanded means through the mentioned anti-competitive and lock-in practices.
[2] The parts used to fight malaria and such, at least. Not so much the $319 million he sent to his pet media outlets, to give but one example of what is counted as "philanthropy": https://www.theblaze.com/news/bill-gates-bankroll-media-outl...
You can't just put the word "objectively" at the beginning of something and make it objective. He's not hostile to those kids in Africa who don't care about software freedom but are not dead because they didn't get malaria.
I get that we're on HN, but this idea that the good of software is somehow the most important good is just lunacy. I genuinely cannot fathom how anyone can see stopping software patents as more important (or even remotely close to the same level of importance) than stopping malaria.
But it's not just the good of software, because software is eating the world. Software is in your phone, in the tractor that grows your food, in the gene sequencing machine (and gene sequencing software) used to fight disease, in self-driving cars, and in non-self-driving ones too. And you can bet there will be software in automatic weed killing robots.
It's how you access your bank, the news, even government services. It's how you find a date, a taxi, how you order food. It. Is. Everywhere.
On net, if you were at risk of malaria, he is not hostile. But to the average global citizen, and especially their descendants in the future, he is hostile. Because the line between software freedom, and just freedom, is vanishing, and fast.
What about the children?
Holding a candle of bitterness against him so long after he moved on to an admirably altruistic life and actively redistributed his wealth says more about you than about him.
(Spoken as someone who has experienced brutal commercial outcomes thanks to Microsoft shenanigans back in the day).
If that were the case, wouldn't it make sense that his new "altruistic" ideals conflict with the "ruthless competitor" ideals that Microsoft holds?
As the two monks carried on with their journey in silence, the younger monk blurted out, "You took a vow of chastity! You promised never to touch a woman! How could you have just picked her up?"
The older monk replied; ”My brother, I put her down a few miles back. Why do you carry her still?”
If bill gates in the past was "ruthless" and Microsoft was born from that, then it's logically inconsistent to say "bill gates is a good person because of his altruism despite his ruthlessness in the past" since his current altruism does nothing to address that past ruthlessness.
This guy deserves all the bitterness he can get. Here is the reason his wife divorced him. Now go and whorship somebody worthy.