So I just read Bill Gates’ 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.
He sold his first software before it was even finished to his own unuversity.
He saved Apple to avoid an antitrust trial.
It’s just business right?
He sold his first software before it was even finished to his own unuversity.
What drives me crazy is when I hear this fact being cited as a positive thing that makes him a role model.
Watch the TV movie from the late 90s “Pirates of Silicon Valley” which pretty much paints both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as really shitty people. I mean just look at what Gates did with the Altair. Said he had an operating system, didn’t have an operating system, and what have you.
Then there’s the whole Xerox Park thing where neither Apple nor Microsoft would be where they’re at today without the engineers at Xerox who were pretty much forced to hand over their stuff because Xerox execs didn’t see value in a GUI and Mouse. Gates and Jobs both were more than happy to go in there and pillage what was developed in order to create Windows and The Macintosh/MacOS
Yeah, that’s a good one, and I also enjoyed Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. Stories like Jobs getting a bonus when Wozniak was able to design a board with fewer chips and then not mentioning the extra money to Woz are perfect examples of how sociopaths like Jobs and Gates have operate. It’s sad that ruthless charlatans like them who exploit the true geniuses and innovators are allowed to accrue so much money and power in our society.
Well yes.
Being a Billionaire should be criminalized
I kinda compare it to semi truck weigh stations. I found out some time ago that if the math works out that a truck got from one weigh station to another too fast the driver can get a speeding ticket since its assumed they broke the law getting there. Apply that to money. If a person accumulates too much money, it should just be assumed that person broke laws getting it and they should be severly fined (like, most of it).
They’re not assuming anything, they are doing calculus.
His mother was an influential person on the board of directors of several firms. She met with John Opel, who was the IBM chairman, and secured her son’s Microsoft contract with IBM in the 1980s, where it then became dominant.
It’s who you know.
Yeah, I read that he was a nepo baby. Also, people say “But he dropped out of university to start Microsoft.”
He dropped out of fucking Harvard. His life was easy as piss from the get-go.
Is everyone at Harvard a nepo baby or has definitely had an easy life? I don’t understand your argument.
It’s a reasonable assumption that a family that could send their child to Harvard in the 70s was very well off already.
Not to say he’s a good person, but contrary to most billionaires, he
- actually contributed some technical know-how in building his fortune (still, billionaires should not exist)
- did not rape children (as far as we know so far)
Furthermore, he’s long gone from Microsoft, so I think your ire is better directed at Satya Nadella and similar totalitarian elitist pieces of shit
Well, not raping children is kind of a low bar. But didn’t he lobby Astra Zeneca not to open source the covid vaccine, because he has a stake there? Humanist my ass. Edit: someone already pointed this out already, I ought to read the thread before posting.
Also largest owner of arable farmland in the US
it is a low bar, but one that a majority of oligarchs fail to clear these days
Melinda Gates divorced him because he was fucking around.
She divorced him because it became clear he was a regular on Epstein’s island.
Unfortunately it does look like he, too, was involved in this kabal. Even though we don’t know for sure, there’s not much point in assuming innocence, even though I won’t consider him a pedo-criminal until I see some more evidence.
nothing unfortunate about him going except for the victims. Fuck his reputation with regular people, let rich people think hes a good guy
She divorced him because he was best friends with Jeffery Epstein. They had DEEP connections
To be clear - while I do consider it likely that it was as the other reply to your comment suggests - I won’t judge a stranger for cheating on their spouse as long as it is consensual and they don’t expose anyone (e.g. their spouse) to a risk of STDs
If it’s explicitly consensual then it’s not cheating because you are not breaking any understood rules of the relationship.
Also, the only reason they were successful at all was his mom was on the IBM board and got IBM to support their shit.
“Well, Steve [Jobs]… I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”
There is a viable alternative to the problems raised by Bill Gates in his irate letter to computer hobbyists concerning “ripping off” software. When software is free, or so inexpensive that it’s easier to pay for it than to duplicate it, then it won’t be “stolen”.
—Jim Warren, July 1976
Sometimes it’s about the effort of paying than the actual cost.
Of course, with Microsoft it’s both.
Very well put. I cannot stand the entitlement in the original letter.
AstraZenica COVID vaccine was going to be opensource but he used with weight as a donor to pressure the university to sell it to a firm he had ownership instead
No, I don’t think that’s accurate. Oxford Unkversity was going to waive their rights to the vaccine, and Gates pressured them to instead partner with Astra-Zeneca. But to my knowledge Gates never profited from that deal. Now, was there still some shady backroom dealing going on? Very possibly.
who cares if he didnt profit? “I convinced this man to make money off of the sick and he did it and profited off of a global contamination, but at least I also didnt get a kickback right? He was just gonna give it away the fuckin idiot!”
such a swell dude. totally not a shitbag human
I read about that, yeah. All hail Mammon; money above all. Sometimes I think wealth changes something in a person’s brain, like psychologically or neurologically. It’s as if they get so detached from reality that they lose all empathy and sense of community. I’ve heard the term ‘affluenza’ used as a joke, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense as a legitimate thing.
It takes a certain kind of personality to even become a billionaire. You don’t become a billionaire by being kind and ethical
I think there’s research to that effect.
Well, it would make sense. Rich people have always creeped me out, just instinctively.
I’m sure the threshold varies, but I would back research that attempts to pinpoint or at least narrow down what amount of wealth starts to change your brain chemistry for the worse.
Its any position of power in my experience. People get power, justifying in their mind that they and people like them should be in power. Even games about being in charge run into that problem. Maintaining power becomes a major part of the game at some part.
That’s a good point, as illustrated by things like the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Also the issue of you need to be a deranged psychopath to get wealthy in the first place.
The Hated One has a few videos about Gates and the shit he has done. Windows is only the tip.
I don’t know The Hated One; I’m assuming they are a content creator. What kind of stuff do they usually do?
Sorry about that. He is a content creator who posts on Youtube and bitchute who focuses on privacy, security, protesting, civil rights, the environment, and consumer rights. Usually how silicon valley is making all these problems worse with their greed.
Thanks for sharing those channels!
You’re welcome.
Wonderful; thanks for sharing. I’ll check him out this weekend.
You are very welcome.
He’s also a thief of course, as that’s the only way to become a billionaire.
Yup. He stole a bunch of ideas and code, then got upset that people were stealing his ideas and code. Do as I say, not as I do.
Wait… You’re telling me that people born into extreme privilege and wealth turn out to be self-aggrandizing, egotistical, sociopaths who drastically over-estimate their own importance and contribution to society?
My world view is shook!
His wife left him when she found out he’s in the Epstein files. Because Bill Gates rapes children.
If I was a billionaire looking to make waves, I’d release a memoir upon my death bed, admitting to the kid rapey cabal. Nothing to lose. Hi Bill.
That is exactly how it looks. The timing is correct. I can imagine the argument, although, they might not have loved each other enough to even argue about it by that point.
Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past him.
I think he genuinely believed it was the best thing for society. He, like so many, was (and likely still is) convinced that everyone thinks like he does. So he believes the only thing that drives people is money.
Now if that were the case, the only way to advance society and facilitate growth in software would be to offer smart people a lot of money.
In that flawed logic, he really thought it was for the best.
Fair point. It’s not an excuse, but it does explain a lot. Nobody is the villain in their own story, after all.
Cool, you’re taking life lessons from a 21 year old…
And he is one of the “better” billionaires. He has donated over $100 Billion to help people around the world, which makes him look like a great guy on paper.
I think it’s not so much him as a person, but his business decisions in the context of capitalism. That’s the real evil, not any one person.
Just to be clear, I’m not defending him or his actions.
Brave of you to hold a nuanced opinion! So many people have a very binary view of others, and Lemmy’s the same, as the downvoting shows.
And yes, totally, he was a typical morally corrupt businessman and one of the first tech bros in a time before most of Lemmy was even born. But he’s also done a lot of good in the second half of his life. People are dismissive of that but they bloody well shouldn’t be.
Who else has contributed $2bn specifically to fight malaria? Nobody. There’s quite a few now who could have helped but nobody else has. The Gates Foundation has also contributed that much again towards fighting Tuberculosis and AIDs. These are big numbers and they’ve had a real effect. Those of us who live comfortable lives are fortunate where these diseases aren’t everyday killers of friends and family and we cannot fully appreciate the benefit this work has done.
Does this offset his earlier negative behaviour? I honestly think it might do.
So many people have a very binary view of others, and Lemmy’s the same, as the downvoting shows.
What a ridiculous argument you’ve made here. The voting system is literally binary. No one can vote 7/10 on messaging, 4/10 on points.
Does this offset his earlier negative behaviour? I honestly think it might do.
This is exactly why hes done it. You don’t know what hes actually responsible for. You don’t see the pharmaceutical investments hes made, farmland he owns, or his bad takes (like recently suggesting that we should abandon the climate because he’s dipping his toes into the AI space).
You see some flashy figures and figure, well that must be a good guy!
Some “nuance” that is.
I think it’s not so much him as a person
Gates is in the Epstein files.
He is moving money in his own foundation
Yeah. He has shaped the world in very negative ways through his decisions. He could donate his entire fortune today and live out the rest of his life in a monastery, but I would still hate him.
That doesn’t even scratch the anti consumerist behaviour behind what he did to Linux that piece of shit.
