I mean, the good he does in his later years is far disproportionate to the harm he did before, so that's how it should work right? No one's all good or all bad, you take the bad with the good. In the case of Bill Gates I would hope for a lot more like him which is what I hope people will one day say of me...

Highly debatable, maybe you are very young and dont recall how Microsoft absolutely attempting to crush any competing tool, company, framework or standard with absolutely 0 remorse. Hell, they even financed the ludicrous litigation of SCO against Linux. Cool than now Gates and his partner can promote great social campaigns, with all the good-willing, free publicity and tax benefits it generates, but let's not forget there is a long trail of pain and misery behind it.

Not saying he wasn't very bad, and it's true I wasn't around for the worst of it. But it's almost impossible to believe that it's not outweighed by the good he has done in the last couple decades, the sheer scale of which is hard to wrap my head around.

The damages they made by forcing to install that crap that is Windows, are still here and ongoing. I don’t think the costs of that monopoly is even calculable.

Don’t forget “developing countries” too: a brasilian friend was running a copy of windows “licensed” for poor people. Wtf.

The glorification of Gates nowadays still worries me.

(To not talk about their server and enterprise monopoly)

While he is doing a lot of good work, even today's Gates is not a saint. He has investments in shitty companies like Monsanto. There have been reports about bullying people who speak against his foundation. He has used his enormous money and power to go against the will of voters on education, at least once. And so on.

I am coding since 1986, so old enough to remember those days.

Apparently there is this revisionism where Microsoft was doing Mafia style visits to everyone, giving advices at gun point that accidents happen.

It is incredible how there is this culture that only the man is to blame, while those taking the money couldn't be helped to do otherwise, those pour souls.

Please. Crushing competition in the software field hardly compares to saving lives. Some estimates put the number of lives saved at over 100 million. Hell, saving one life would make up for all the business hurts Microsoft caused and more. One has to be exceptionally callous to consider businesses going out of business greater than human lives.

> Some estimates put the number of lives saved at over 100 million

I want a source on that, because even Gates in this absolutely self-serving report(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/14/bill-gates-phi...) did explicitly not claim he or his foundation is responsible for the 123 million estimated reduction in infant mortality since the year 2000 . As important as vaccination is, child mortality has decreased by many many reasons, including rising standard of economic conditions,decreased world fertility, an accelerated movement to urban life and widely distributed medical care. To attribute this complex and global set of conditions to just one individual is beyond sycophantic.

> One has to be exceptionally callous to consider businesses going out of business greater than human lives.

Spare me this sanctimonious take. So Gates used some part of the money he extracted in monopolistic and quasi-criminal practices to buy children vaccines and now he cannot be criticized because "can somebody please think of children?

By the way many of those countries who receive vaccines from the Gates foundations had to pay exorbitant license fees to use monopolistic MS products.

Feel free to criticize. All I said is comparing lives saved to businesses destroyed is ridiculous and stupid as a criticism. Even one life saved is greater than all businesses destroyed, but that's just my opinion. You seem to think losing businesses is worse than losing lives. That's an opinion I call callous. But the reality is, it's stupid to compare the two in the first place.

the good he does is questionable. he's paying for drugs from us big pharma for a few years to destroy any competition from cheaper indian drugs, then they let the poor African countries caught in dilemma : continue paying for the costly treatment of their citizens or let them die. I call that an elaborate corruption scheme. I wouldn't be surprised if some american politicians were involved