I probably should not do this, but it has been festering for quite
awhile. Whether you agree or disagree with me, please do so
silently or privately. I am 64 now (thus accounting for the
curmudgeon side of this) and have been involved with computers and
software since 1956. My first personal computer was a 4 bit KIM,
which if you had the requisite skills you could get to light an
LED. I have used operating systems from CP/M to the WINDOWS 2000
and ME. Anyway, here goes.
Some thoughts on Bill Gates:
1. He made his fortune
because he had rich parents behind him. Yeah, right! Starting
from what he got from his parents and running it into over $50 billion is
no mean feat.
2. He is probably the
most astounding "visionary" of the last 100 years.
3. He has given more of
his personal wealth to charities and truly needy causes than any
man in history.
4. He should open
source all his program code so others could compete against him.
Again, yeah right! If you truly believe this, send me all of your
best source code so I can sell it too. It would be much easier than
developing it for myself. Ever hear of competitive advantage; it is
what most companies strive for and few attain.
Windows in all its forms:
1. Can you write
several million lines of code that is bug free. If so, Bill Gates
will pay you one hell of a lot of money to work for him.
2. If IBM had not been
so mired in muck that they could not move we might all be using OS/2 now
and it would be a pretty good operating system. Bill Gates did a
lot of the development on it. It is still around as WARP 4 and not
a bad operating system as far as it goes, but try to get a new printer to
work with it.
3. Without Windows a
large number of the technology companies in the world would not exist
now. It is very likely that RBTI would be one of them and Razzak
might still be a surgeon who you never heard of. Horror of horrors,
we might all be on mainframes.
4. But some of the
other operating systems are free or very cheap. Mayhap that is
about what they are worth. Do you want your company to work its way
up to where your products are priced between free and $19.95?
On the greedy side, Bill Gates made me over $8000 today and for that I
thank him profusely.
Again, if you want to blast me, please do so privately. Next time
you want to blast Bill Gates and Microsoft make a two sided list as they
directly affect you and if the negatives outweigh the positives, fire
away.
Joe Sowers
