I agree, and I am also amused why it got so many upvotes?
edit: grammar
Paul Allen - correctly so in my opinion - gets a lot of respect from hackers.
Not on HN. Because he's a patent troll. I am also surprised at the upvotes.
My guess is that it's part of the campaign to make developers love Microsoft by reminding them that Microsoft was once a startup too and like Apple, it has it's own folk heroes. I guess they overlooked the fact that people on HN apparently don't like this guy.