[sutro]

No, what's easy is to sit here from our current vantage point and call what he did easy. So what if he had an upper-middle-class family willing to put him through college. He walked away from that when he dropped out of Harvard and lit out for the middle of nowhere with no significant funds or support system to bootstrap a "software company" before such a thing even existed. He wasn't given his fortune, he built it himself, painstakingly, with decades of hard work and sacrifice. And because he didn't always play nice with competitors you and the other holier-and-smarter-than-thou HN commenters want to call his incredible accomplishments "easy." Whatever. He has achieved more, not just as a philanthropist, but as a hacker-entrepreneur, than anyone on this thread ever will.

[rbanffy]

> And because he didn't always play nice with competitors you and the other holier-and-smarter-than-thou HN commenters want to call his incredible accomplishments "easy."

Now that's a straw man. I never said it was easy to build Microsoft from its humble beginnings in Albuquerque into whatever it is now. I said it's easy to decide you'll try to start a company (Microsoft was his second attempt) when you know that your future is ensured whatever happens (the first company went bust). I also said it's easy to be the biggest philanthropist in history when you also have the deepest pockets in history.

And no, I am unwilling to forget his unethical, borderline criminal behavior, his despicable disregard for the law and the damage he did to what was once a competitive, diverse and flourishing industry. Microsoft's monopoly (and the consequent lack of diversity) has set the advance of technology back years, if not decades. Like many HN'ers you call "holier-than-thou", I have lived - and worked - in the pre-monopoly years and I can tell you, from first-hand experience, the world is a much more boring place because of him.

He may donate all his money to whoever he wants, but that won't erase his past.

[sutro]

Saying it's easy to give when you have Gates' deep pockets negates the effort that it took to fill those pockets. Of all the crimes in the world to call Bill Gates a criminal is to have completely lost the plot. I don't particularly like Microsoft technology either, so I've spent my career (which has been far from boring) working on other technology stacks, and have always had plenty of opportunity to do so. Yet despite that choice, I acknowledge that I owe Gates a great debt for pioneering the business of software, a business which, divorced from hardware, didn't exist prior to 1975, and a business of which I, and I suspect you, have been a major beneficiary.

How does your track record measure up to Gates'? Which companies have you bootstrapped? Which charities have you founded? Or are you just a bitter salaryman complaining from the cheap seats on the sidelines?

[rbanffy]

> How does your track record measure up to Gates'?

I was never involved in anti-competitive practices. I probably had more girlfriends and went to better parties. Girls considered me hot.

> Which companies have you bootstrapped?

None. I am not a billionaire.

> Which charities have you founded?

I regularly donate to several local charities.

> Or are you just a bitter salaryman complaining from the cheap seats on the sidelines?

The chair I am using now is cheap, but seems well built. While I could be called a salaryman for the past couple years, I cannot be described as bitter.

And, more interestingly, how does comparing me to Gates reduces in any measure the harm he has done? Are you attempting an ad hominem after the straw man and the false dichotomy failed to prove your point?

[sutro]

Ah yes, ad hominem, the great refuge of the HN peanut gallery. Many want to be judged on their comments alone. But commenting on a website is easy, far easier than any of the things in Gates' career that you claim were easy. So I was wondering if you had done anything in your career that I would consider hard. If you had, I might be inclined to give your comments more respect than they deserve on their face. But it sounds like you haven't, so you have no standing to criticize Gates in my book.

[rbanffy]

> Many want to be judged on their comments alone.

Ideas should not be judged by anything other than what they are.

> So I was wondering if you had done anything in your career that I would consider hard. If you had, I might be inclined to give your comments more respect than they deserve on their face.

The respect you give to my comments is not important to me. You may give the respect you think they deserve, for I will not give your thoughts any more respect than I think they deserve.

> so you have no standing to criticize Gates in my book.

You must know your book is not a very important one for anyone but you.

[sutro]

Ideas, thoughts, comments, criticisms don't deserve much respect whether they come from me or you or anyone else. Because it's all just talk, and talk is cheap. Actions and results are what matter. Bill Gates is a man of action and results.