By silicon.com, 28 January 2004 13:25
NEWS Earlier this week silicon.com criticised the UK government's decision to award Bill Gates an honorary Knighthood.
Our issue with the award had nothing to do with Gates himself but everything to do with the timing of the announcement, which coincided with his visit to the UK to discuss NHS software licences and to meet with Chancellor Gordon Brown.
We also question the messages being sent out by the UK government in awarding its highest honour at a time when the recipient's business is being investigated by the EU, sparking one reader to raise the question of spin and "sleaze".
We never questioned Gates' excellent work for charity or his contribution to the UK jobs market but many of you didn't care about that - as far as some readers were concerned this was more unnecessary Gates-bashing.
Smithy, a student of hyperbole from New York, wrote: "You had to go and show just how small-minded and mean-spirited you are didn't you? The 'Hate Microsoft' brigade keep showing the whole world how really nasty and vicious you are, and how all encompassing the hatred of Microsoft has totally taken over all your mental faculties."
Another reader, who chose to remain anonymous, wrote: "Small-minded, petty jealousy. Frankly I'm bored with reading this stuff. There isn't a CEO alive who is deserving of recognition on the basis of your wayward logic. His contribution to business has been immense. Personally I couldn't care less what he does with his money but to sneer at him for giving money to charity is unworthy of you."
The fact no "sneering" at Gates' philanthropy had actually taken place in either of our articles inspired another reader to write: "Let's all put our toys back in the pram and read what was actually written in the article."
We couldn't have put it better ourselves.
Other readers, who had actually read the article, still disagree with our views and put forward some interesting arguments. Some were keen to point out that the activities of Microsoft and its co-founder, chairman and chief software architect are not inextricably linked and therefore it is possible to reward Gates without endorsing his business.
"Let's separate man from Company," wrote David from Hampshire. "It's the man who is receiving the gong not the Company."
Gerard Chadwick wrote: "It is well documented the donations Gates gives to charity, and this alone is deserving of recognition in some form, especially if UK charities are receiving aid. It is Bill Gates getting the award not Microsoft."
Another reader wrote: "While I applaud Bill Gates philanthropic endeavours, they can't be regarded in isolation. The fact he presides over a corporation that runs roughshod over the laws of most Western nations, with an outstanding investigation under way in Europe, should have at least delayed any decision regarding such an award."
While another reader wrote: "Not only is it right to question the award of a gong to Gates, it is our duty as loyal subjects and sentient beings. His company is under investigation and the government would not come up smelling of roses if Microsoft were found guilty of anticompetitive practice. At the very least this would appear to be a case of bad timing - but it could also be construed as rallying around a beleaguered chum."
And finally, Dominic Tristram, a programmer from Bath, wrote: "I'm glad that people are seriously questioning this award. By all means reward Gates for his charity work - I don't think anybody could argue that this is a bad thing. However, Microsoft harms the British economy far more than it might help it. Just how many employees do they have here? It's a token amount considering the revenues generated.
"If the government spent a third of the money it pays Microsoft for its substandard software on paying British companies to write open-source alternatives, not only would the government have to spend a lot less but thousands more would be employed and the whole world would benefit. Who can present a rational argument against that?"
Now that sounds like a challenge Dominic. Keep the feedback coming in by registering a Reader Comment below.
Comments
There are 23 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Yup, keep those comments coming from the errr.... PC on your desk that is running err... Windows (unless you are one of the massive linux community that account for a whole 1.2% of the UK PC count). The point is, MS helped to make the PC a commodity product that everyone now uses - and this has meant that the world and their dog now use the internet etc. This probably would not have happened if PCs did not have a standard, easy to use software interface. The ARE other OS options, and this is good - but I think MS was as key driver of MASS PC adoption, and that is good. What happens next? well, thats the interesting bit.....
2. Bob Fiero
If a drug dealer donates to charity, does that make him a good man/woman? I have more respect for drug dealers than Bill Gates, at least the buyers know they are purchasing something bad for them.
3. phil pritchard
My son has a learning disability, could not write, could not read and has communications problems.
He can however use Windows XP, can use Explorer and searches all around the web by using words that he copies using Google.
What is more, he can use it on my PC at work, at home, at friends, at Grandads.
He is now developing keyboard skills, can spell some words, can read a few words. terrific. Bill & Windows have made someones world a lot better than what it would have been otherwise.
Could he be doing that on MVS, on UNIX - I think the answer is a resounding NO.
4. anonymous
Microsoft is virtually a monopoly, something really needs to be done about it ! The Linux and Apple Macintosh platforms are both excellent alternatives and a real attempt should be made to ensure their use becomes more prevalent in the workplace and at home.
I'll withold my comments on what I think of Bill Gates ! ;-)
5. anonymous
We should separate the man from the organization. In the week of the Hutton enquiry result it seems churlish to hold Bill Gates responsible for the tactics of his organization. I'm sure he honestly belived that Digital Research, IBM OS/2, Wordperfect et al represented threats to civilisation that justified bending the the spirit of the rules a bit.
Perhaps we should expect a war against Finland (believed to be harbouring a dangerous economic terrorist) next year?
6. Geoff Jones
Charity is not the issue, It seems you have a dislike for MS or not.
The IT industry paid my mortgage over the last 25 Years+. I have worked with Unix and MS products in that time, they each had thier merits and changing between them was hard mind set change but I went through it. One of the reasons I see people knocking MS is the way it couples product together, hence the law suits. But perhaps bill should reley on his name more( Microsoft that is) if people had better access to coupling in other products Netscape, media viewers etc. etc. I would still choose the Microsoft option as I trust it more than most. I trust microsoft because it has better option for testing. PS HP is someone else I trust.
7. Garry Nevin
I have a boy who cannot read or write and has communication difficulties. He uses a Mac which reads all the web pages to him as well as all menus and dialog boxes without addition software AND it doesn't get viruses. Bill hasn't given him anything useful.
8. James H
Re: Microsoft is virtually a monopoly.
I can tell you what to do about it, go and buy a mac or linux. The option is there, but 90% of the world choose not to take it. All OS systems have their advantages and disadvantages. Regardless of the *dodgy* campaign, I believe MS gained the monolopy by creating the most all round useful/usable OS on the market.
9. M Clark
The problem with this debate is there really is no simple answer.
There are pros and cons of having Microsoft around. I firmly believe that Microsoft, until now, have been a necessity to encourage wide spread adoption of PCs with a common platform which helps us communicate. However, the industry is maturing and the common platform is no longer a necessity..
It is also quite likely that without Microsoft being the near monopoly that it is, Linux would not have attracted the number of supporters it has today..
The question is, how do we stimulate competition without "cutting of our noses"?
10. John F jackson
I think Gates is one of the greatest men who have ever lived. Why do jealous people always want to knock success?
What he has done to shape our lives is incredible and most of us have a richer more rewarding and fulfilled life thanks to him.
11. John Beardon
Bill Gates has been responsible for turning computers into universally compatible business tools and rightly deserves his 'gong'. All of the 'Microsoft Bashers' seem to forget the time when you couldn't share documents, applications had learning curves like brick walls and computing in general was a disperate mush of incompatible formats and systems. Many companies and legal systems may view Microsofts practices as 'Anti Competative', but I say to those companies - Are you actually capable of producing products to compete or are you attempting to blame Microsoft for the fact that you are still producing unstable and incompatible products that no-one wants? I for one am suprised that Netscape is still going. If this is an example of 'Open Source Superiority' then I suggest that they go back and look at the raft of their own standards that they are now incompatible with!
12. anonymous
Whilst it is easy to criticise Microsoft for their anti-competitive behaviour, it is important to remember that they have done a lot of good along the way. Whilst many people now complain about the "Microsoft Tax", which everyone has to pay for software licences and upgrades, where would we be without Microsoft?
Well the RISC Unix vendors would still happily sell you a Unix workstation rather than a PC for about 3 to 4 times the cost for a similar performance system. They may give you the operating system free, but I think we can say the cost was more than covered in the hardware bill. Similarly, it was only when Microsoft got into the database server market that their competitors were forced to drop their prices to competer. Is anyone saying they would have done this without the threat of Microsoft? I would argue that Microsoft has done more to bring down the cost of both hardware and software in the last 10 years than anyone else through its agressively competitive approach to winning market share. The challenge now for Microsoft is not to use its dominant position to fleece the market.
One of the problems for Microsoft is their success. With big organisations having very large numbers of desktop PCs the cost of software upgrades looks huge. But if you look at it on a cost per employee basis then it doesn't look so bad, and when you compare it to other costs for that employee is it really too much to pay for the facilities that are provided?
OpenSource software may provide an answer. It is certainly putting pressure on Microsoft pricing just as Microsoft did to other software vendors in the past. But in general terms as a desktop operating system Linux is still too hard for the average user, frequently doesn't run the software they need, and doesn't make a viable alternative. All these problems are being worked on, but many of the solutions are only offered as a chargeable add-on to the free Linux distribution. So as the functionality gap closes the cost of the extra software increases, and suddenly the cost benefit has evaporated.
Right now Linux simply offers the average user less for less money - not a winning combination. If one day it can offer better functionality for less money then I will start to take a real interest.
13. Nic
I think the problem of this discussion is that it over-states the value of the knighthood... I suspect that Britannia's long-gone empire must have looked a lot like a monopoly to those ruled by it, or outside of it. Honour among thieves?
14. anonymous
Where are the UK once giant industries; automobile, textile, electronics, and even academia. They have all been swept into oblivion - these are the questions we should be asking rather than attacking a philanthropist. We are all a bunch of laggards and armchair critcs and this attitude must change starting from the MONARCHY to the lay man on the street. We've always been a people of great minds but what we are witnessing is a country in decline.
15. Philip Nash
I've just read the reader comments on yet another one of your articles knocking Microsoft / Bill Gates and must confess to being totally bored by this endless whingeing. I see that one of your reader comments (from Dominic Tristram) makes the call for the "holy grail" of open source, but I see an analogy here with socialism / communism. Theoretically and in an ideal world it was a good idea, but the world isn't ideal and practically it doesn't work. The debate over communism is over, can we please end this debate over ubiquitous Microsoft software and open source and get on with reality. The reality is that most forms of human endeavour achieve most when the person doing them has something direct to gain for themselves. This is human nature, learn to live with it!
16. Matt
My son has a learning disability, could not write, could not read and has communications problems... Could he be doing that on MVS, on UNIX - I think the answer is a resounding NO.
Sorry to dissapoint - Linux has been doing this for years. We have a guy in out Linux User Group with similar issues and he happily uses Linux. SuSE have a blind developer as well and had a braille keyboard facility years ago.
17. anonymous
Where are the UK once giant industries; automobile, textile, electronics, BBC and even academia. They have all been swept into oblivion - these are the questions we should be asking rather than attacking a philanthropist. We are all a bunch of laggards and armchair critcs and this attitude must change starting from the MONARCHY to the lay man on the street. We've always been a people of great minds but what we are witnessing is a country in decline.
18. anonymous
I'd be interested to know to which 'charities' it is that Bill Gates donates, and how much he donates to each. Such knowledge might make it easier to make a value judgement as to the degree of moral weight his charitable contributions carry.
19. Peter Risdon
Some deeply idiotic, slavishly pro-MS remarks have been posted here. IT professionals should know and use more than one operating system, working to their different strengths, but few of the posters here seem to be capable of understanding that.
MS dominance derives from:
1. A good deal with IBM, whose early PCs came to dominate the fragmented micro computer market.
2. Fraudulent error messages in Windows 3 which knocked rival DOS versions out of the market (see out-of-court settlement with Caldrea over DR DOS).
3. Volume per-processor licenses that obliged PC manufacturers to pay for Windows even if they didn't install it, meaning they all had to ship Windows whether they wanted to or not.
All examples of deal-making, not computer science.
MS has a history of making NON standards compliant technology, shifting technologies to knock other firms out of a market (Java, javascript etc). Interoperability exists despite MS, not because of them. The internet (a Unix technology at heart) is a good example of what can happen with different attitudes. Note that Gates dismissed the net at first.
The computer interfaces we all use are remarkably similar, be they Mac OS, Windows, KDE, Gnome or whatever. Windows, scroll bars, icons, menus all emerged from efforts by various companies. The history of the modern GUI starts with Xerox (who invented the mouse) and pretty much ends with Apple. MS copied (as did others) but have contributed almost nothing to this process.
MS software atrophied after Win 3. Dos development basically stopped (compare DR DOS with graphical DOS web browser and e-mail client, TCP/IP stack, command history and good networking tools). Win 95 (aka Mac OS 1985) and 98 were glosses, based on Apple's good work. Only with the emergence of Linux as a competitor have we seen genuine improvement. But even now we see copying. Anyone who has used Novell Directory Services will have found Active Directory strangely familiar. Novell innovated, MS profited. After all, if you can let other companies develop and test, then rip them off you're going to have a healthy balance sheet.
And there are some really disquieting moves still going on. Media Player is trivial compared to the Palladium proposals, which would allow MS to remotely lock your Word documents.
Competition is essential for a healthy computer industry. We would have better software, from a wider range of suppliers, conforming to international common standards, were it not for Microsoft's commercial tactics.
When they made their deal with Cambridge University there were resignations from the comp sci faculty.
Pretending they are not a controversial company and that they have not used extraordinary and immoral tactics is fatuous.
But when computer professionals cling to the coat tails of one particular company, rather than embracing the industry as a whole, and become deeply limited as a consequence, a certain stridency is to be expected.
20. willie
In theory I agree with the comments that were posted...we live in a free press society. Nevertheless, the problem with the line of thought presented in the last lines of the comments is, the government does not pay MS to make or develope software. When the government needs to support a developer to develope software then it (the software) should belong to the government and not the community. Be that as it may, it sounds good but it is not the logical way of thinking. I would propose the designers of the software provide a better product to the government so they can see the benifit and value of the software and therfore make a decision on what it is they want in their organizations. MS as good or bad as it may seem is not the issue, it is the thought process that we have been led to think is correct in the "MS bashing". If people would put more time and effort in creating rather than condeming then we would be better off. As they say, why can't we all just get along.
21. Peter Risdon
Let's take John Beardon's contribution as an example:
<quote>
Bill Gates has been responsible for turning computers into universally compatible business tools and rightly deserves his 'gong'. </quote>
- You always could share documents with people who were using identical technology. I can open any MS Office document on my FreeBSD system, which I'm using to type this message. MS are trying to outlaw this by trying to ban 'reverse engineering' so developers can't continue to maintain compatibility. But you try to open one of my files on your MS machine. MS don't want you to be able to do this, because they want to try to stop people using other systems.
<quote>
Many companies and legal systems may view Microsofts practices as 'Anti Competative', but I say to those companies - Are you actually capable of producing products to compete...
</quote>
- Instability has always been the problem with MS products. Check the Netcraft surveys for servers with the greatest uptime... almost all BSD Unix. Blue screens, pointless reboots after trivial configuration changes, were all part of the fun with MS, though Linux has forced them to improve radically recently, a testament to the virtues of the very cometition that MS so successfully repressed until in desperation people started developing for free.
Stand up for MS by all means. I think products like Office, Win XP and 2003 server are very good - I beta tested the latter for 6 months prior to release and use it wherever appropriate. But if you're going to do so, get real.
22. anonymous
*sigh*
To all you saying MS is a monopoly think of this, why is windows STILL being used if linux is so good? Hell, Linux is FREE and windows is not, and yet windows still dominates.
Deal with it by making linux better, not by bashing it's superior.
23. Jason Bastia
Looking past what incredible charity work Bill Gates has done, and the ingenuity he has given to the computer world, the US Governmnet needs to stop attacking Bill Gates because of his wealth that he has rightfully worked for, and he has worked hard for very penny he has earned. Our governmnet should be holding up Bill Gates as a role model for our youth instead of taking away what he has rightfully earned.