From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Nov 18 2002 - 15:09:10 MST
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>>(Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com>):
>>
>>How dare people act as if Bill Gates is some kind of saint. This
>>is a level of dishonesty that I find utterly unforgiveable.
>>- samantha
>>
>>
>
>It is equally unforgivable to treat him as a demon just for
>being a good businessman. I have no doubt that if a few of his
>less savory tactics were taken away, he'd be worth less--say a
>...
>
He's not a demon. The problem is really structural. He is efficiently optimizing one of the less ethical ways to succeed in the current environment. But the particular path that he has choosen degrades the playing field for everyone else. It's like bringing a wrecking ball to a football game. If it weren't against the rules, or if the penalty were minor, it would certainly be a way to win. But it wouldn't add much to the play.
If you want me to conceed that he was a very slick business man, and that he parlayed a minor fortune into a major one, I'll grant you that without question. But the tactics that he used to do so repeatedly involved illegal actions, suppressing inventors. Deceptive marketing. Deceptive purchasing (e.g., he promissed the creators of Spyglass, the kernel of Internet Explorer, a percentage of the profits... and then he gave it away.) Etc. Much of what he did was even legal. This doesn't mean that it added value to the community.
P.S.: The original computers that MSDos ran on were considerably more expensive than the competition, and not measurably better. They sold because IBM slapped their logo on them. But Apple, Commodore, and a host of others were close behind in capability, and considerably lower in price. I give MS no "community good" bonus for having been able to monopolize the market. The prices were already dropping faster every year before they joined. (OTOH, Digital Research really blew it. They may well have deserved to loose the market, it's just that MS never deserved to gain it.)
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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