[jhuni]

This negativity could be directed against the authoritarian attitude towards problem solving. If you have a problem with Microsoft Windows you have to ask the Microsoft authorities to solve it for you because they won't give you the source code so that you can handle the problem yourself. In a similar sense, Bill Gates isn't asking for the community to democratically decide where money could be best spent, he is spending money wherever he wants to solve problems he personally deems to be the most important.

[corporalagumbo]

It's his money, so he gets to decide what to do with it. Likewise, Microsoft Office was his product, so he got to decide what privileges to offer users. If you didn't like Office, did you build a competitor program? No? Then don't complain.

Seriously, the freedom to enjoy success and the autonomy to use one's own money and run one's own business however one sees fit, within the limits of the law, are like the fundamental principles of capitalism and basically the key to all modern economic and technological progress...

[jhuni]

> It's his money, so he gets to decide what to do with it. Microsoft Office was his product, so he got to decide what privileges to offer users.

Microsoft Office is only "his" product because Microsoft is holding its source code in secret rather then releasing it to the benefit of the entire world. Since Bill Gates' entire career is based upon secrecy rather then productivity his ownership of billions of dollars is illegitimate.

> the key to all modern economic and technological progress

The main thing holding back technological progress today is secrecy. When corporations develop products in secret this leads to wasteful overlap. We should be using the Internet to facilitate global cooperation on technological projects.