[dusklight]

Does that mean he should stop and go back to being a barracuda?

It's certainly not fair to make the comparison of saving one life in exchange for taking another. A better comparison would be saving many (millions?) of poor, non-white lives in exchange for stealing money from privileged white men (majority of people in the software industry during his era).

[scholia]

Gates helped make a lot of your "privileged white men" rich by providing a market for compatible software and hardware. He also helped a lot of Asians become rich as well.

In the 1980s, Apple went round Hong Kong, Taiwan and China suing companies for making knockoffs of the Apple II (ie better, faster, more reliable and much cheaper versions of the Apple II). Then along came the PC industry, which welcomed them -- and their innovations -- with open arms.

How do you balance a handful of self-righteous American programmers against the wealth and the millions of jobs generated by Acer, Asus, MSI, Hon Hai, Wistron, Pegatron, Quanta, Compal, Inventec, etc?

[gnaritas]

> Does that mean he should stop and go back to being a barracuda?

Of course not.

> It's certainly not fair to make the comparison of saving one life in exchange for taking another.

It's exactly the right example because it makes the moral choice clear and that same choice applies to the lesser scenario.

> A better comparison would be

We don't need a better comparison, it's already been made clear that you can't make up for sins against one by helping another.