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Comment by haneefmubarak | Hacker News Reader

Even though I generally dislike the man, I gotta say I admire how he handled that. Especially considering how much of a prick the other person was being.

If I had been in the same scenario, eventually I would have responded:

"Are you trying to obtuse or are do you simply lack basic comprehension skills?"

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Gates was being super evasive, with-holding information and playing dumb. I don't fault the interviewer at all, the name of the game is pin the tail on the weasel, it's only natural that he has to repeat himself and ask gates to clarify over and over. The fact is Microsoft feared Sun as a competitive threat, and did some unethical things to try to undermine them. Microsoft's implementation of java was part of that strategy(embrace, extend, extinguish). Obviously what ethics means or should mean in the context of corporations is a whole bag of worms, but it's clear that Microsoft did and continue to do things that were detrimental to the advance of computer technology as a whole to benefit themselves.

The important point that dawned on me watching this video, is that the things you describe weren't done by Microsoft as a faceless corporation, but consciously by specific people, and by Gates himself directing the activity.

That's how I recall it being perceived at the time as well, that Gates's deposition came off as evasive, and wasn't that well received.

I think you've missed the point of the game that's being played. Gates is in the hot seat, and he is doing his best to wiggle his way out of a tight spot. So saying that you admire how he handled that is a bit like saying that you admire how he weaselled his way out of the trouble he was in for MS abusing its monopoly and other anti-competitive behavior that he and the rest of the MS board were up to at the time. But, yeah, he obviously did his job well, so long as by "well" you mean in a way that optimized MS chances of success, while hurting MS competitors' chances of success.

If you don't mind my asking, why do you dislike Bill Gates?

He ruthlessly destroyed his competition using unfair/shady/sometimes illegal business practices are we're all worse off as a result.

He's also from the very beginning been strongly opposed to free software.

> we're all worse off as a result

Who is we? Who are you speaking for? Are you speaking for me? Are you speaking for millions of people his foundation and charity work touched?

Step out of your little bubble and leave your childish comments there.

His charity (while good for the world) doesn't undo the damage he caused when he was CEO of Microsoft.

What damage. How did it impact you.

Well, ms crippled the web as an application development target by freezing ie for somewhere between 5 and 10 years, in order to support their desktop software monopoly. A monopoly that used to cost on the order of $100+ per pc. So they got probably an extra $400 from me.

I'd also question what damage he did as MS CEO that can in any way take away from the good his foundation is doing/has done.

I'm generally opposed to the idea that people can crush others in their pursuit of wealth, and then become "good" now that they are part of the uber-rich (and can afford to just toss money around). It encourages the idea that the ends justify the means.

It's business - you play to the limit of the rules and if you break them then you try your best not to get caught.

MS didn't crush people - it crushed companies. There's a big difference.

> MS didn't crush people - it crushed companies. There's a big difference.

Companies run by robots, I suppose.

No, run by people - as your facetious comment sarcastically points out.

However, it is entirely possible for these people to get another job.

So, because people can "always get another job", you think it's right that Microsoft under Bill Gates (unethically) crushed the companies that they put their time, money and effort into? Man you must be drinking some crazy corporate kool aid

Yes.

A company is not a person, a person is not a company. Attacking one should not be considered the same as attacking another, our entire economic system is based around the abstraction of organization so as to shield people from legal liabilities incurred by simply pursuing trade. You can't have it both ways, to both enjoy the legal benefits of a corporate structure, and then to be able to claim public sympathy when you get beaten in the market.

Corporate personhood is a dangerous legal concept that Americans believe in for unfathomable reasons, and it causes all sorts of ethical problems, particularly legalization of political manipulations that are considered corruption in other parts of the world.

The idea that "it's just business" so it's ok to do anything and everything that you can get away with (up to and including breaking the law) is a harmful idea. "Crushing" other businesses by participating fairly in the market is different than using under-handed tactics to win at all costs ("history is written by the victors," "might makes right" and all that).

Not drinking kool aid - just have a realistic understanding of how business works.

I never said it took away from the good. I said that the damage he caused doesn't disappear because he is doing good.

We are the people who end up having to deal with a lack of free choices, a small range of products which are buggy, and DRM bullshit.

As for his foundation and whatnot, it could be said that a fairly large number of people, given the sort of financial resources he has, would help "millions of people". Actually, a lot of extremely wealthy people do use their financial resources to help vast numbers of people. Often, they just make donations instead of creating foundations, since other foundations may already exist to do what they want.

As such, it is quite reasonable to disregard the "millions of people his foundation and charity work have touched", as many others would have done the same in his place.

> We are the people who end up having to deal with a lack of free choices, a small range of products which are buggy, and DRM bullshit.

What are you dealing with? Get real, you are sitting on HN waiting for your Uber.

Buggy products? Who has bug free products? Name one bug free product from 10 years ago. Is it going to be some half ass Linux desktop distro? The new bi-weekly 'Windows Killer'?

Lack of free choices 10 years ago was completely normal. Using free alternatives in 2000 as a desktop was laughable at best. Even now, in a golden age of OSS where you have tons of cool tools and cheap processing power. Mature projects have issues with finding quality contributors. I'm not talking about a random jQuery plug-in, etc.

Market spoke and it's 100% clear. I was around when there was a 'movement' of getting Linux distros to every office. That was a decade ago and the only viable competitor that made it into the space was Apple. They borrowed some of their base from *BSD. Which is mostly a server workhorse. Ironic.

Why are you bringing up DRM? What does it have to do with Microsoft? Learn about business schematics and history of it.

> As for his foundation and whatnot, it could be said that a fairly large number of people, given the sort of financial resources he has, would help "millions of people".

It's not about raw $ it's about % of wealth and focus. Handing off money to a foundation for a write off is not 'charity work'.

TLDR: You have no idea how different the technology space was 10 years ago. I can say this with extreme confidence.

> Using free alternatives in 2000 as a desktop was laughable at best

I used a combo of Linux & FreeBSD as my desktop OS exclusively from ~2000 to 2005 (when I bought my first mac). For the 4 years prior to that range I only ever booted into Windows to play games.

What DRM bullshit? I thought it was Apple that implemented Palladium?

>As such, it is quite reasonable to disregard the "millions of people his foundation and charity work have touched", as many others would have done the same in his place.

Steve Jobs quote:

>Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology

Also, throwing money at charities is far less effective than try to affect change by working full time on it. If money was the solution, the tens of billions given to Africa would've solved the issues.

If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft's role as a major proponent of DRM and generally consumer-hostile device policies, you just haven't been paying attention.

Allowing Vista to play Bluray makes MS a major proponent of DRM? Then so are Google(Widevine acquisition), Mozilla(DRM in HTML5) and Apple. If you're referring to the FUD against Vista DRM, it was debunked long ago. I guess you missed it(read all three parts).

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/everything-youve-read-about-v...

Also, perhaps you believe more FUD against Windows 7's perceived DRM, but it was also debunked.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/02/oh-the... Perhaps you need to read from more varied news sources than just Slashdot, Groklaw and Boycott Novell/Techrights.

And what have you got to say about Palladium implementation by Apple?

I agree with you, but you are talking about the philanthropic Bill Gates of today. Colechristensen was referring to the Bill Gates of the 90's with his shady and unethical business practices which led many businesses and new products to failure, which meant that the only internet browser people could use was his own. If browser competition started earlier, we could be much further in the browser development world than we are today.

Please stop trolling

I think you have a fair point; I've downvoted you purely based on your tone.

Hitler liked dogs.

Most of his competitors destroyed themselves. See "In Search Of Stupidity" by Chapman.

Brilliant book. In it, Rick Chapman also states how there were some things MS should have done differently, but the general opinion that MS "killed" competitors' products and was strongly monopolistic is quite wrong.

He has strongly opposed free software for a long, long time. Additionally, his company has been a strong proponent of DRM for ages and just keeps making it worse.

That wouldn't be so bad if it worked with few problems, but somehow, I always seem to get caught up in the DRM bugs in Microsoft's implementations.

Also Internet Explorer, with its incompatibilities, yet very large user base, and Microsoft trying to enforce its own web standards - held the internet back for a long time. Web apps could have been better and cheaper to develop if it wasn't for this factor.

We are still paying for IE. XP can't install a version greater than IE8, which many people and companies still use.

Yes, 14 year old operating systems have limitations, have you tried installing Chrome on Redhat 7.2 recently?

How about Chrome on Mac OS 9, or Mac OS X 10.1?

I think you're completely missing the point. First, I'm not blaming Microsoft. Second, there are more people using XP than using Macintoshes or Linux. I'm simply pointing out that we're still paying the price for the IE domination of the late 90s early 2000's. At this point Microsoft is paying a price too. Hopefully windows 10 will garner enough support that they can move away from their past also. Their latest versions of IE are actually quite good.

Reminds me of the -webkit tags that became the defacto standard forcing Opera, mobile Firefox and mobile IE to support them since web developers can't be bothered to code to standards or update their code. If it works in Safari/Chrome it ships because of their very large user base in mobile, exactly the same situation with IE.

http://css.dzone.com/articles/why-webkit-new-ie6-trap-vendor http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/australian-technology/the-w...

Not to mention Chrome developers "trying to enforce their own web standards":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7184912

Progress on web standards have always been spearheaded by browser implementations before being standardized, there were many non standard extensions that Netscape implemented that IE had to add support back in the day. IE6 was a particularly bad issue because major browser releases were tied to Windows releases and Longhorn/Vista had to be reset and delayed.

Yes. I am not saying that Microsoft has monopoly for this. But they had better leverage than anybody else in the desktop era (thanks to the way IE was bundled with Windows) and did it for large scale. Which made them disliked. I'm not a supporter of Google, which is becoming more of a bad guy than Microsoft these days.

All the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, & Doubt) Gates' ilk produced to scare people from Freedom will bring tears to future generations' eyes. How could someone so ruthlessly oppose voluntary, community-led development (which by now we can safely say won)? Answer: Look at his company's financial investors.

Relevant Revolution OS snippet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw8K460vx1c&t=6m40s

Virtually every company in the world has opposed free software... Including Apple and Google. Outside of Mozilla and Xamiran, I can't think of many companies that do back free software.

Xamarin (if that's what you meant) is proprietary and quite pricey at that ;)

For starters:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents

http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/

They may not have been written by him, but they accurately describe and predict the observed behaviour of Microsoft w.r.t. Free Software under Gates' leadership.

And that's just what MS did to Free Software. Under Gates, Microsoft were just as ruthless towards other competitors, seeking to undermine them in a number of ways (unfairly leveraging their monopoly position, dumping, sabotaging) rather than competing in the marketplace on the merits of their products. See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

I'm just curious, no pretext here. But did you liked Steve Jobs?

Amusingly enough, I'm fairly neutral on him. His good is exactly equal to his bad, IMHO.

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