[bluGill]

A lot of rich people have decided the best thing for them to do is get as much money as they can and leave it to a worthy cause after they die. That is they spend their life investing and reinvesting, overall doing what they know best: making more money. Often it takes money to make money, and by not giving it away now when an opportunity to invest a lot of money comes up they have that money where as if they had donated it they wouldn't have it to earn more. When they die the amount they have to give is then overall much greater than if they had given away large parts of it.

I don't know that I agree with it or not, but that is the thinking and it isn't completely unreasonable.

Note that Bill Gates has been getting a lot of money from Warren Buffet and other rich people. I don't know the break down (it is likely public information: I just don't care to look it up), but it isn't fair to say Bill Gates is working on his own, though he is clearly giving his valuable time.

[BoiledCabbage]

> A lot of rich people have decided the best thing for them to do is get as much money as they can and leave it to a worthy cause after they die.

Yeah I don't know about that. The majority of rich people decide what they want to do is make as much money as possible and distribute it to family members. It's there money so obviously they have the right to do just that.

I have a lot of respect for Bill Gates in that he has chosen to be as effective with his money as possible in positively impacting the world. I believe he has committed to giving away 99% (or 99.9%?) of his money to noble causes before he passes. As well as inspiring others to make similar pledges.

[curun1r]

The problem with this theory is that it disregards opportunity cost. This is what I don't get about everyone that lionizes Gates and everything he has done with his billions. Those billions came from depriving others. What would those at Netscape have done with the extra billions if they hadn't been forced to sell for a fraction of what they could have become? What would those at BeOS have done with their money if Microsoft's illegal OEM deals hadn't made them fail? What would all the businesses who were forced to spend money they didn't have to on Microsoft software have done with it if it hadn't flowed to Microsoft instead?

Microsoft's business practices, in my view, introduced greater inefficiency into the software and business ecosystem. They were a parasite that drained resources from every healthy business "organism" and no amount of philanthropy can make up for the opportunity cost paid for Gates to amass his wealth.

[Turing_Machine]

"Those billions came from depriving others."

How is giving people something they want "depriving" them?

I have little use for Microsoft software, but, you know, lots of people like it.

[curun1r]

Look up the "Windows Tax"...Microsoft earned billions forcing their software on people who most certainly did not want it. They used underhanded tactics like illegal bundling, abusive OEM contracts and intentionally obscured file formats to edge out better competition. Given how well documented their history is, I'm not sure how anyone can claim that Microsoft is just giving people what they want without being completely ignorant of what happened in the 90s and 00s.

[Turing_Machine]

Oh, please.

I remember that era well. There were always plenty of machines available that didn't pay the so-called "Windows tax". I know. I bought (and installed Linux on) many of them.

You know what? The number of people (again, including me) who didn't want Windows? That was a rounding error, dude.

[curun1r]

You're missing half of the Windows tax. It wasn't just charging for licenses that didn't end up getting used. It was also about forcing OEMs to choose between offering Windows and any other OS. It killed BeOS and had a chilling effect on anyone else building an OS that they intended to charge money for. That left Microsoft's only competition being Apple, who made their own hardware and didn't care about selling Windows machines and open source operating systems, which could never get UI right enough for mass adoption.

So yes, many of those machines sold with Windows pre-installed didn't have another operating system, but that doesn't mean that if Microsoft hadn't broken the law (those contracts they forced on OEMs were illegal) that people would have still chosen to buy those computers with Windows pre-installed. I consider people who were forced to use Windows because of the lack of alternatives killed by Microsoft's illegal business practices to be similarly paying the Windows tax.

Had BeOS gotten any reasonable market share, it would have quickly become a huge threat to Microsoft. It was miles ahead of Windows in terms of quality and some of its features are still, 20 years later, better than we have in current operating systems.

[Turing_Machine]

I'm already regretting getting into an argument with a zealot, but to be blunt: you are simply incorrect.

People (especially the kind of people who installed alternative operating systems) could, and did, assemble their own machines without paying any "Windows tax". At all.

Yes, some manufacturers cut a bulk deal to bundle Windows with complete systems.

No, that didn't make it impossible (or even particularly difficult) to avoid the so-called "Windows tax".

BeOS didn't even run on Intel hardware at first, btw. When I used BeOS (and I have used it, hands-on... have you?) it only ran on PPC machines. The port to Intel happened after the Return of Jobs and the decision to use NeXTSTEP (which became OS X) for new Macs. That's what killed BeOS, not the "Windows tax". The port to Intel was a late desperation move.

I'm tagging out now. I have better things to do than rehash a war that was over 25 years ago.

[trophycase]

Maybe, though I'd generally trust a smart guy to spend their money better than a bunch of random people who could be shopping at Wal-Mart and buying a Hummer for all we know...