Personally, I think these good ole nonprofit boys; Billy, Zuck, Warren, etc. are tax dodgers.
Obama wanted to reform nonprofit regulations, but chickened out.
1.) Proprietary UNIX vendors. Cheap workstations? Fuck you. OS without a support contract? Fuck you. First party compiler? Fuck you. These started to improve after 2000 with ports of open source tools, but most people would realistically be in way over their head price-wise unless they were accessing these systems through a university or workplace.
2.) Open source UNIX and UNIX-like systems. Linux was still pretty rough around the edges, and BSD derivatives were still pretty widespread. All said and done, you had to know these existed, know how to be involved in the community, and deal with the reality that the money just wasn't there yet. These options were not without compromise -- it would be years before Linux began making inroads in the "serious" deployment market.
3.) Microsoft. They did shitty things, but it was possible to get affordable development tools on affordable (and actually quite performant, all things considered) hardware, instead of needing tens of thousands of dollars for option 1 or being in the right place and time for option 2. Windows, VB, etc. causes lots of moaning and groaning today, but it had to have been magical at the time.
Give them all a try on period accurate hardware, one after another. You will become acutely aware why people put up with Microsoft.
If you want to focus on just his business, initially, Gates was a tech hero, upsetting the incumbents as much as any modern disruptor. His company came to be known as a villian, was itself upset, and is going through a reinvention period during which I think they are doing really good things. But none of that should be about his character. He played the game and won, then got out and focused on more important things.
You forget that outside of tech everything that MS did that we rail on about will be remembered as good business. Nobody except people on the inside have these idealistic views about software and freedom and all that.
He spends a minor portion of his extreme wealth on good causes and charitywashes his bad reputation into being a "good guy."
We then don't talk about the fact that we could go remarkably further on the same course if we took a much larger bulk of his wealth and put it toward similar objectives of reducing poverty, disease etc.
This is of course nothing new. Robber barons did the same thing, which is why there's a Carnegie Library in my town etc.
Who could? You and I could? The government could? Honestly asking, I don't really know what you're saying. If that money went to the government a very small percentage of it would be used to reduce poverty and disease. A much higher percentage of it would be used to fund the military.
Bill and Melinda Gates have pledged 95% of their wealth to charity. So far, they have given away about $45B, and have a remaining wealth of about $110B -- even if they didn't give away any more than that, that's still over 30%, which I don't know if I'd consider a "minor portion".
How do you envision going significantly farther towards the objective of reducing poverty, disease etc than the Gates Foundation?
Maybe he doesn't even tell himself that, but works like that subconsciously.
But if they donate to a charity that spends the money outside of the US, should they get the full benefit of that tax break? It’s an interesting question that I never thought about.
This is just a thinly veiled way of saying "america first".
Also, Bill Gates revolutionized the computer industry and brought a lot of wealth and power to the US and control of a good industry.
The fact that he right now goes for diseases world wide is great, I would not want to die from Polio or Malaria, those disease can always make a comeback and spread like Covid... it would be better to have them eradicated entirely.
Not really disagreeing with you for anyone else, though.
