[johansch]

Guess: it was perpetuated because lots of tech people hated him and what he did to the industry and to computing progress in general.

He has since gotten way, way better PR handling though. Just look at the way Reddit absolutely adores him nowadays (he's done lots of very carefully managed AMAs). Heck, even on HN there's enough young people who have no idea how much this one individual repressed computing progress over 1-2 decades through market abuse.

Here's one example of many of how the pro billg PR is done:

https://www.reddit.com/r/secretsanta/comments/5iphpa/i_won_s...

[reaperducer]

Another guess: He actually said it and a few people heard it, but when he said it was before everything in the universe was constantly being recorded, photographed, and pushed to the internet, so there's not necessarily a record of it.

Back then, you could just deny something happened, and often get away with it because you weren't being surveilled 24 hours a day.

It's like when someone very knowledgeable about a subject posts information on Wikipedia. Even if they were there first hand; even if they were personally involved with the event; even if they wrote magazine articles about it and did radio interviews about it, and it was covered by television — if it happened before 2000, it'll get erased from Wikipedia by someone on the other side of the planet because there's not a web link or an ancient library book to cite for "proof."

/Yes, I'm speaking from experience.

[johansch]

I don't disagree with you.

Sort of related:

It's a bit distressing, in away, how hard it is to access information from before like year 2007. Most of it is locked up in government reference libraries and you generally have to bonafide "researcher" to even access physical copies of publications. Oh, and it's not allowed to make copies of the material.

Thanks a lot, Disney.

[qubex]

I’m a child of the eighties, I grew up in the nineties, I remember waiting in line for my boxed copy of Windows 95 one August night in 1995, I remember ruling at Microsoft’s antitrust case (as related in WIRED), I remember how Slashdot featured an icon of Bill Gates with Borg add-one, but... I absolutely love the guy now and wish he would run for President (I am not American, just terrified).

[johansch]

Do you at all remember any market abuse, or do you only remember the good stuff?

(Is this an attack? I can't tell any longer.)

[qubex]

No it’s not an attack. I’m just stating why in good faith I disagree with your statement.

[hota_mazi]

> (he's done lots of very carefully managed AMAs)

You seem to have a pretty prominent chip on your shoulder regarding Bill Gates.

Gates has donated billions of dollars of his fortune to charity and he's largely credited for having eradicated malaria through these efforts in multiple countries.

It's hard to find a good reason to dislike someone like that.

[orionblastar]

I think most people are angry he put a lot of businesses out of business by bundling IE with Windows to put Netscape and other companies out of business that did web browsers.

Microsoft made their own version of Java that almost killed Sun. I think it was J++ and later J# and then Microsoft made C# to replace it.

The original DOS was CP/M that Seattle Software and Microsoft made their DOS do CP/M API calls and a program to convert CP/M programs to DOS. At the time this was not illegal, ECT. Microsoft did Basic, Fortran, Cobol without getting a license for them for 8 bit Pcs.

Those are just a few examples, mostly unethical but not criminal in 1970s and 1980s. By 1999 the DOJ investigated Microsoft.

https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...

Also Apple fans claim Microsoft ripped off the Macintosh with Windows and tried to put Apple out of business.

To people like Gates there are good and bad things, and people only know the good things and ignore the bad things because Microsoft built their own industry, ect.

[johansch]

How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing.

Did you ever pause to consider how much humanity would have progressed without him stopping so much progress in the first place?

(I deleted a section on the malaria stuff; I misread your comment slightly at first.)

[qubex]

I never liked Bill Gates when I was a power user in the nineties and early 2000s but it really is amazing that one could offset his contribution to disease eradication and his philanthropy generally with some aggravation about his business’ tactics and nebulous what-ifs about what might have happened if he had not been on the scene or had behaved differently. (Moore’s Law would did it’s thing anyway, whether he was there or not, and even with him there, Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop market relented anyway.) Do you really think the annoyance of a free browser warrants indicting his post-business career?

[dTal]

>Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop market relented anyway

Hardly. Market share is still roughly 85% Windows, 15% Mac, and fuck-all % Linux, which is reflected in the level of support provided for applications, games, hardware etc. Even disregarding compatibility, MacOS is not a straightforward alternative as it only runs on Apple hardware, which is very expensive and only offers a narrow range of opinionated designs.

[johansch]

You're very naive if you think that Microsoft's market abuses was limited to web browsers.

This is way too non-inclusive, but at least it's something:

https://www.pcmag.com/feature/302767/9-companies-microsoft-d...

In the 80s Microsoft under Bill Gates was extremely fierce. Silicon Valley software companies lived in constant fear.

There was a bunch of well-documented market abuse using the control of the OS (MS-DOS).

Further reading:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41611.Hard_Drive

[johansch]

Just noting that this comment first only talked about the browser bundling antitrust thing, and then, after I commented, completely morphed into something else.

[qubex]

I’m not really sure what you are referring to because I have not edited any of my comments, but this one probably closely resembles another one I made further up and therefore might give you the impression that there had been some ’morphing’ involved.

[webreac]

Hello, I have also lost karma points on this subject. I also feel that Microsoft had a very negative effect on the progress of computer science during many years but it is very difficult to convince other generations. There were many positive and negative effects. To grasp the global effect, you need to have lived all the progress of the previous years before Microsoft and you need to have followed all the commercials fights to eradicate concurrence (dr dos, stacker, borland c++, ...).

[johansch]

Two hours later. Wow, you weren't wrong about the down-voting.

The lack of a sense of history here is disturbing. I thought HN was better than this.

[johansch]

Hi.

It does illustrate the power of the combination of time and lots of money. You can literally alter truths.

[ben_w]

The main thing I remember from the era of Gates Is Literally Satan was the browser wars, and how awful it was that Internet Explorer was both free and tightly integrated into the operating system.

#cough# Safari on Apple devices

#cough# Chrome on Android and ChromeOS devices

[torstenvl]

Dishonest comparison is dishonest. I'm pretty confident it's actually possible to uninstall Safari, and that macOS will continue to work.

Besides, the integration with the operating system isn't the problem. It's the integration with the only operating system. It isn't monopoly abuse if you don't have a monopoly.

[johansch]

That was at very end of the Gates era.

[lamp_book]

If not Bill then Bob. At least he's doing some good in the world with that cash instead of hoarding it for him and his family. If it weren't for him, how long would have malaria persisted?

[johansch]

I think his primary motivation is so simple.. he wants people to like him.

Many, many people disliked him after his predatory business days. This is the perfect way to a) keep doing interesting work, b) getting people to like him again, c) get some personal karma.

I can quite easily see the appeal of this.

Also; I'm a big fan of his current work. I loved how my country (Sweden) matched a very large billg foundation program funding the other year; I think he's way better equipped with handling that money than my government's idealistic but fumbling people.

I just think we shouldn't forget his past just because he's turned into modern day santa. We should learn from history...

[qubex]

I’m not American but I wish he would decide that the situation there warrants ’philantropy’ and would this casually pour a billion or so into getting himself the Democratic nomination and the presidential election just for the sake of ousting Trump I’m a Battle Of The Billionaires (alleged, in Trump’s case).

[hota_mazi]

> I think his primary motivation is so simple.. he wants people to like him.

Yeah, you definitely have something against him, don't you?

I don't really care what his motives are, I just look at the results of his contributions and there is no doubt in my mind he will be remembered as someone who was instrumental in saving millions of lives and advancing our civilization.

> Many, many people disliked him after his predatory business days.

I profoundly disliked him as well back in the days, especially since I was a hard code Amiga fan.

As opposed to you, I have changed my opinion based on additional data.

[johansch]

> Yeah, you definitely have something against him, don't you?

Well, yeah.

I think we'd be at least 5 years further into the future in terms of software than we currently are, possible 10, unless he hadn't abused the markets so gravely.

[hota_mazi]

> How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing

Please no ad hominem attacks, focus on what I said, not how old I am.

But if it matters to you, I wrote my first lines of code in 1979 on an Apple ][ and I've lived through the exact same times you did.

I find little point in speculating on what could have happened that didn't, I focus on reality and what people have actually achieved in their life time.

[johansch]

It wasn't an attack (heck, wtf, I was just asking your age, maybe stop over-dramatizing?); I was trying to find out if you had some sort of personal experience or was just parroting the newer reddit hivemind.

[hota_mazi]

What you did is the text book definition of an ad hominem attack: undermining someone's argument by attacking their character instead of addressing what they said.

[johansch]

Today I learned: Asking someone their age is equivalent to doing an ad hominem attack.