The Softening of a Software Man

theodp writes to tell us that New York Magazine has an interesting editorial stating that no one is afraid of Microsoft anymore. The article argues that Microsoft has noticeably been adrift in the wake of Gates' philanthropy, which some cynics suspect is a Rockefeller-like attempt to 'fumigate his fortune' as he makes a play for the history books. From the article: "Like the robber barons, Bill Gates has moved from trying to take over the world to trying to save it."

can you blame him?

[User 956]

New York Magazine has an interesting editorial stating that no one is afraid of Microsoft anymore. The article argues that Microsoft has noticeably been adrift in the wake of Gates' philanthropy,

Well, it does take a lot of effort and energy to be competing with Bono. [time.com]

Re:Yeesh..

[GoofyBoy]

>Is giving ~2% of your fortune to charity each year really that amazing?

He plans to eventually give it all away, leaving something for his childern.

Thats a bit more than ~2%.

Re: identity politics and "divide and conquer"

[Cryofan]

Yes, exactly, and that was certainly not a new tactic. In fact, the system of checks and balances built into the American constitution was actually imported from England where they implemented it because it tended to divide up the people'e power, and set them against each other, paralyzing the power of the people, thus making it harder for us proles to tax the rich more.

A political scientist named Fresia has a book online that talks about this. It's called _TOWARD AN AMERICAN REVOLUTION_.

Also, one Richard Bissell, an early CIA honcho who helped start the Ford Foundation with CIA and plutocrat money, said the tactic for destroying leftism was to not debate the leftists about their ideas, but instead to divert their energies to activities and interests that would be less harmful (to the rich and megacorporations, one presumes). The primary diversion created by the Ford Foundation and other nonprofits was Identity Politics/Pluralism/Multiculturalism.

Divide and Conquer, same as it ever was....

I can't say what drives him today...

[C3ntaur]

...but this little gem will always be a reminder of where he originally came from:

AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS By William Henry Gates III

February 3, 1976

An Open Letter to Hobbyists

To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.

The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.

Why is this? 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? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.

What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.

I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

Bill Gates

General Partner, Micro-Soft

Re:Check the facts

[everphilski]

you can see that they pay out three times less in contributions than what they earn from investments

Thats the whole point of a foundation. you DO NOT give as much as your investments return. You have to account for things like inflation, which is not steady over time and which is actually at a low point right now.

You can say what you want about the Gates foundation but the fact of the matter is that is has done real work - and it is well-managed. It isn't just a billionaire throwing money at the latest fad, it is a self-sustaining foundation aimed at an important problem for our time. Bravo.

-everphilski-

Re:Adrift? Try sinking.

[dioscaido]

You may want to take a look at their quarterly earning reports [microsoft.com]. Last quarter alone they had a 9% increase in revenue (that's a 900 million increase, 10 billion dollars total revenue, just for the *quarter*). And with what? They've barely had any new software releases, and have had security issues with their OS's. But they are still going strong. I'd keep my eye on them in '06. They are having new releases of essentially every big property -- Office, Windows, Visual Studio, SQL, Xbox -- and are predicting double digit growth.

Re:Check the facts

[HoboMaster]

Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation has given, with inflation accounted for, three times as much money to charity as Rockefeller, who gave the most to charity before Gates.

Obviously your new job isn't in accounting.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a swing of careers in my working life as well, from minimum wage (5.15 at the time) to well, a hell of a lot more than you make. My wife has had a similar swing with her landing at accountant... you know, the people that do all that fun taxstuff. I'm not talking about the silly H&R Block tax preparers, I'm talking about people who make millions more than you do (although, I'm sure anything above 1 million is about a million more than you) and corporations and the like.

One of her pet peeves (and mine by virtue of being married to her) are idiots that don't understand the tax system, that think "the rich" have magical hiding spots for money and that "the poor" (generally whoever is talking because everyone thinks they don't mkae enough money.

Interesting fact I bet you don't know: Actual "poor people" get OODLES of cash back that's unavailable to people in anything from the middle class (roughly $37,000 or more) a year and up.

Oh, and "rich people" are in a higher tax bracket. They pay more in taxes and these "tax cuts for the wealthy" that people like to talk about, without really knowing what they are and having no intention of finding out (seriously... if you heard "geez, there's a way to get more money on your taxes" wouldn't you TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THAT IS, instead of just saying "oh, it's for them there richy type folk!"), are basically things like tax credits for buying hybrid cars (because only the rich want cleaner air) and tax benefits for first time home owners (another low to mid class benefit that helps the so-called poor because they're more likely than "the rich" to qualify for ridiculously low interest loans from organizations interested in providing first homes.)

You're probably one of the idiots that gets the income tax refund at the end of the year and thinks you've just "beat" the government and don't realize that most of that refund comes from your earned income credit, which "the rich" pay for in the extra tax money.

You see, the couple thousand dollar refunds "the poor" get in March and April don't come from God, and they don't come from the few thousand in withholdings (usually not enough, and certainly not enough for people on most forms of assistance) that get taken in by most of you people, they come from "the rich." And your "pure charity" (ie, those taxes where you actually pay a smaller percentage of your income than those who make more than you... sorry, your 42% of poverty level income quote is pure BS) goes for things like the police, the firefighters, the EMS, subsidizing health care so people without insurance who want to go deadbeat on hospital bills don't bankrupt such services... your charity is just you paying for YOUR share.

And the funny thing is, it's those rich people paying more in taxes that are less likely to go deadbeat on their hospital bills, are more likely to have better security features and insurance on their cars and homes (thus, less need for the police when something happens)

Oh screw it... you're one of "those" and you'll never understand taxes but don't worry, MY tax money will go towards keeping state tuition so much cheaper than private school so that you can have one of your children become an accountant and THEY can try to explain it to you.

Pot, meet the kettle.

[SETIGuy]

> The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.

That line is just classic Gates, the computer time may have been worth $40,000 but Gates never paid for it. Gates and Allen did not even have authorization to be using the university machines in question, something Gates himself would probably liken to "theft".

Actually, the jist of the story is that Gates did his development on machines owned by the U.S. Government and that's what got him kicked out of Harvard for misuse of federal funds. I assume that efforts of Bill Sr. are what kept him out of jail, why Harvard allows him to say he "dropped out," and why Harvard doesn't talk about the real circumstances of his leaving. (Well, I'm sure the reason they don't talk about it now starts with $ and ends in $.)

Bill started Microsoft based upon theft, and theft has been it's primary business since then. Pardon me if I don't trust his motives in doing charity work.

I'm sure Capone did some nice charity work, too.

Re:Um...

[kuzb]

Thanks, I totally agree with your statement. Many of the new generation are not aware of what happened during those days. As an owner of a Laser 128 [apple2clones.com] (which I loved to death) I followed with interest Apple's destruction of the many available Apple clones [apple2clones.com] which were out there. Even after that, I purchased an Apple //gs [fortunecity.com], just to watch Steve Jobs destroy that platform too, as he pitted his own engineers against each other in a ridiculous internal power struggle which eventually killed the //gs. Many of my friends ask me why I won't buy anything from Apple anymore. Well, those are a few reasons why. They have a history of screwing over their customers.

Anyone who thinks Steve Jobs is a nice guy, or is looking out for your welfare is seriously misinformed.

Re:Yeesh..

[Cirvam]

Not sure where the GP got that statement but Carnegie thought it a shame to die with any money and while his views were quite contrasted to his actual actions sometimes he did belive in trying to help everyone out. I don't think he really cared about his image. Rockefeller is another example of this, his personal belief was that it was God's gift to let him make all his money and it was his duty to do good deeds with it, so he donated massive amounts to medical research and created many charities, however none of them at the time bore any obvious link to Rockefeller. He also required that the charities be self sufficent and have other doners, so if they needed $2M for something, he would require them to come up with $1M from other doners first. (Although I think he regularlly covered the difference if it was required)

While what Gates is doing is definatly notable, it just seems more of a PR move with the whole point as to establishing his legecy. Why not create a foundation and name it after something a bit less pretensious.

Re:gates following in Rockefeller's footsteps

[Cirvam]

Rockefeller was the first, and his right hand man specifically SAID that their goal was to influence the American political culture. THat is a direct paraphrase of the man who was instrumental in Rockefeller's foundation ploy.

I'm not sure which Rockefeller you are talking about, if it is Sr. then I'm not so sure about that statement. Rockefeller's charities were mainly in the medical field simply because no one can really say that you are manipulating people or influancing things if you are just curing illenesses. Eventually the Rockefeller Foundation has grown to probably do just about everything, but its inital aims were spread amongst many charities, many of which focued on a specific problem (i.e. eliminating hookworm in the south)...While the rich of that time did get their money in ill gotten ways, a few of them (Rockefeller and Carnegie) had idelogical issues with having that much money, so they attempted to better the world...and for the things that they founded, I would say that it has been bettered in many ways...

Re:It worked for Rockefeller and MacArthur

[Cirvam]

Uh, you do realize that John D. Rockefeller Sr. was pretty far out of the loop on that one? His son was the closest involved but his son was sent totally conflicting messages from the on site people at the mine. Its not quite like the Homestead Strike with Frick.

Re:Original Parent isn't far off

[spge]

I had hoped that the situation in Soweto had changed. The news report you link to is seven years old. However, it seems not. Just over a year ago there was a report about boys as young as seven committing gang rapes: The youngest member of this group is just six - barely capable of tying his own shoe laces, yet somehow old enough to have committed the most serious of sexual offences, however impossible that might sound. [mirror.co.uk]