So I just read Bill Gates' 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] petersr@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I read his memoir "Source Code". He has had a fascinating life and I still don't understand how such a geeky person turns into cold blooded business as he does. There are still a lot of other billionaire I would shit on before Gates and I really respect his pledge to give away his wealth and his work with charity, but yeah well, I guess he has pretty awful sides still.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I really respect his pledge to give away his wealth

Even if it is just a scam?

[–] petersr@lemmy.world -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean - if he at least shows some motivation to do it, then it is still better than the many billionaire that simple don't try to give a shit.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Or his PR firm suggested it would be effective, which it has been.

[–] petersr@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

Sure.

[–] Bloomcole@lemmy.world 17 points 4 months ago (2 children)

fake charity that benefits him in other ways.
there is zero altruistic motive in anything he does.

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure the charity actually does decent work

But yeah, it's basically a way to clear his name in the history records

[–] Bloomcole@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

No, he doesn't care about his name, it's a scam to make more money. https://newrepublic.com/post/177019/billionaire-philanthropy-scam-bill-gates

[–] petersr@lemmy.world -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That is simply not true. I might be that some of it benefits him partly or fully, but saying that nothing of all his projects does anything other than benefit him is something easily falsifiable.

[–] Bloomcole@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Not saying the charity organization is fake itself.
But Gates doing things 'for charity' is 100% fake.

Tax purposes, etc.

Gets a country to buy a vaccine (this specific one, no other generic cheaper one) and then Gates 'helps' by paying 10%.
Huge profit for his investment in the company that he happened to invest in and coincidentally made that specific vaccine.

Noit to mention he profited from covid and was indirectly responsible for massive deaths

[–] insaneinthemembrane@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

What makes you think a geeky person isn't cold blooded?