[oska]

I think your observation is a good one. But yes, it doesn't give him a pass and personally, I'll never forgive Gates & Microsoft for their strangulation of the computing world (and its creativity) through the 80s & 90s. I find Bill Gates a particularly uninspiring & unimaginative individual who has only made the world greyer, not brighter.

[EL_Loco]

I would argue that if he had stepped down from MS in the early 90's, that some other company with a ruthless CEO would take its place. I mean, remember Apple's superbowl ad? Look at what is is today. Remember "Don't be evil"? Ruthless search for power is the history of humankind, and I agree that the actors shouldn't be given a pass. However, what Gates is doing with his foundation is to be admired, as I don't see much of that done, not at this scale. His foundation has never done any good to the world? (sorry, but that's what you mean when you say he has /never/ made the world brighter.) I never worked in tech, so to me I couldn't care much about the state of software in the 90's. I used whatever word processor was available, and whatever browser, and it didn't make a difference to me. I'm sorry, but this is how /most/ people who weren't in tech felt about it. Ask a mother of a hungry child with no access to clean water if she prefers Netscape or IE. (I know this is harsh and completely ignores the repercussions of Microsoft's actions and stances in the 90's, and that an opinion like mine will irritate a lot of people who were in tech in that era, but I doubt without MS it would have been too much different. Maybe it would have been old IBM, maybe DELL, who knows. If not, why are we complaining so much about Facebook's practices, about data privacy, etc. Isn't Microsoft gone from that role? Shouldn't it have been solved then?