| I don't think Microsoft is worse than any other big company in their position, in fact I think they're probably much better given the charity Bill Gates is now engaging in. Most big companies of Microsoft's size engage in unethical or illegal practices, and most of them don't have CEO's that become philanthropists. Gates is doing good, relatively speaking. But I also think that praising Bill Gates as a "Hero" for his philanthropy without looking at how his wealth was generated, or how inefficient that process is misses the big picture. Most of the hundreds of billions of dollars that have flowed through Microsoft over the years didn't go to Gates, and a lot of it was spent on unethical behavior which has held the industry hostage for years. For instance we've only relatively recently begun to see large transitions away from Windows, IE and Office, which might have happened much sooner in a more open market. So who are my heroes? My heroes people working in government trying to rain in monopolies and fostering healthy competition. My heroes are people that write software supporting open protocols that make it easy for everyone in the market to compete on equal ground. My heroes are people in Africa and elsewhere using these technologies to bootstrap their local economies, so in the long term they can buy their own vaccines instead of getting them from Bill Gates. None of these people will become billionaires, and you'll never know their names. But combined they'll do more economic good for humanity than Bill Gates ever could. |