this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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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.

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[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 269 points 3 weeks ago (12 children)

AstraZenica COVID vaccine was going to be opensource but he used with weight as a donor to pressure the university to sell it to a firm he had ownership instead

[–] Maerman@lemmy.world 86 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

I read about that, yeah. All hail Mammon; money above all. Sometimes I think wealth changes something in a person's brain, like psychologically or neurologically. It's as if they get so detached from reality that they lose all empathy and sense of community. I've heard the term 'affluenza' used as a joke, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense as a legitimate thing.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 96 points 3 weeks ago

It takes a certain kind of personality to even become a billionaire. You don't become a billionaire by being kind and ethical

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 24 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I think there's research to that effect.

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[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 18 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Its any position of power in my experience. People get power, justifying in their mind that they and people like them should be in power. Even games about being in charge run into that problem. Maintaining power becomes a major part of the game at some part.

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[–] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 129 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

He's also a thief of course, as that's the only way to become a billionaire.

[–] Maerman@lemmy.world 58 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yup. He stole a bunch of ideas and code, then got upset that people were stealing his ideas and code. Do as I say, not as I do.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 23 points 3 weeks ago

Wait... You're telling me that people born into extreme privilege and wealth turn out to be self-aggrandizing, egotistical, sociopaths who drastically over-estimate their own importance and contribution to society?

My world view is shook!

[–] ButtKiss@lemmy.dbzer0.com 111 points 3 weeks ago (15 children)

Well yes.

Being a Billionaire should be criminalized

[–] shiftymccool@piefed.ca 41 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

I kinda compare it to semi truck weigh stations. I found out some time ago that if the math works out that a truck got from one weigh station to another too fast the driver can get a speeding ticket since its assumed they broke the law getting there. Apply that to money. If a person accumulates too much money, it should just be assumed that person broke laws getting it and they should be severly fined (like, most of it).

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[–] rozodru@pie.andmc.ca 101 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Watch the TV movie from the late 90s "Pirates of Silicon Valley" which pretty much paints both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as really shitty people. I mean just look at what Gates did with the Altair. Said he had an operating system, didn't have an operating system, and what have you.

Then there's the whole Xerox Park thing where neither Apple nor Microsoft would be where they're at today without the engineers at Xerox who were pretty much forced to hand over their stuff because Xerox execs didn't see value in a GUI and Mouse. Gates and Jobs both were more than happy to go in there and pillage what was developed in order to create Windows and The Macintosh/MacOS

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 36 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Yeah, that’s a good one, and I also enjoyed Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. Stories like Jobs getting a bonus when Wozniak was able to design a board with fewer chips and then not mentioning the extra money to Woz are perfect examples of how sociopaths like Jobs and Gates operate. It’s sad that ruthless charlatans like them who exploit the true geniuses and innovators are allowed to accrue so much money and power in our society.

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[–] Core_of_Arden@lemmy.ml 66 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

We all know that every billionaire is a horrible person. They can't be anything else.

[–] FinalRemix@lemmy.world 44 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

You don't get to a billionn without exploiting people along the way.

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[–] kindred@lemmy.dbzer0.com 66 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

There is a viable alternative to the problems raised by Bill Gates in his irate letter to computer hobbyists concerning "ripping off" software. When software is free, or so inexpensive that it's easier to pay for it than to duplicate it, then it won't be "stolen".

—Jim Warren, July 1976

[–] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 19 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Sometimes it's about the effort of paying than the actual cost.

Of course, with Microsoft it's both.

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[–] melfie@lemy.lol 57 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

He’s still the same sociopath as always, except now with a savior complex. Giving away all his money, is he? His foundation has been around 25 years and he still has $100b+ net worth. A single individual shouldn’t have that much power, and the fact that he still voluntarily wields it while virtue signaling affirms every negative opinion of him. Even if he were the benevolent billionaire his PR campaign would have us believe he is, such a net worth should be reserved for governments where it’s spread across multiple agencies that have checks and balances and are accountable to voters. I don’t trust any individual with that much power, though I’d trust any random person off the street over anyone ruthless enough to become a billionaire.

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[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 54 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

And for any of the people saying "he changed".

One of his most recent "philanthropic" ventures was to partner with Nestle (good start) to "modernize and increase yields" of the dairy industries in impoverished countries.

The two organizations then sold modern (likely non-servicable) equipment and entrenched them in corporate supply chain systems geared towards export and making it much harder to trade locally (not sure how that part worked, but was in what I read).

For a grand total of........ 1% increased dairy yields.

Then 3-4 years later they pulled out, leaving heavily indebted farmers without the corporate supply chains and delivery systems they were forced to switch to, and making it very difficult to switch back to the old ways of working, so they can't sell nearly as much locally.

Who do you think will buy up those farms when the farmers go bankrupt and have to sell ar rock bottom prices.

[–] untorquer@lemmy.world 18 points 3 weeks ago

His work on malaria in Africa focused on bed nets to the explicit exclusion of larvacide control of mosquitoes. Millions of preventable cases over the last 30 years.

Then there's the circumcision to fight aids.

Guy's a fuckwit.

Behind the bastards

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[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 53 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (5 children)

His mother was an influential person on the board of directors of several firms. She met with John Opel, who was the IBM chairman, and secured her son's Microsoft contract with IBM in the 1980s, where it then became dominant.

It's who you know.

[–] Maerman@lemmy.world 31 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Yeah, I read that he was a nepo baby. Also, people say "But he dropped out of university to start Microsoft."

He dropped out of fucking Harvard. His life was easy as piss from the get-go.

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[–] phase@lemmy.8th.world 50 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

He sold his first software before it was even finished to his own unuversity.

He saved Apple to avoid an antitrust trial.

It's just business right?

[–] bitcrafter@programming.dev 25 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

He sold his first software before it was even finished to his own unuversity.

What drives me crazy is when I hear this fact being cited as a positive thing that makes him a role model.

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[–] bagsy@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

He didn't even write that software, he had to buy it from someone else because his own version sucked.

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[–] DreamAccountant@lemmy.world 48 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

His wife left him when she found out he's in the Epstein files. Because Bill Gates rapes children.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 20 points 3 weeks ago

That is exactly how it looks. The timing is correct. I can imagine the argument, although, they might not have loved each other enough to even argue about it by that point.

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[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 39 points 3 weeks ago

And in retrospect it's too bad more people didn't steal from Microsoft so that it failed as a business.

[–] RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works 35 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

The Hated One has a few videos about Gates and the shit he has done. Windows is only the tip.

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[–] fuzzywombat@lemmy.world 35 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Obviously Bill Gates is a household name and in the tech community everyone knows who is Steve Ballmer. However not many people know who Paul Allen is even though he was one of the founder of Microsoft at the very start. In 1982 Paul Allen was diagnosed with cancer and Bill and Steve were worried that if Paul died the shares of the company would go to someone else along with control of the company. While Paul was literally getting cancer treatment, Bill and Steve were scheming to dilute the shares of the company to wrestle the control of the company away from Paul. Fortunately for Paul he survived the cancer. It really doesn't put Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in very good light though. I remember reading about this from Robert X. Cringely's blog about two decades ago and I heard Paul Allen wrote about his version of this story in his memoir before his death.

Edit: I tried to find the original Robert X. Cringely's story from back in 2006 but looks like that link is broken but he did referenced it in 2011 when Paul Allen's book was released.

https://www.cringely.com/2011/03/30/i-told-you-so/

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[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 32 points 3 weeks ago (12 children)

I really don't get how opinions on intellectual property and its "theft" turn 180 whenever AI is mentioned.

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[–] wolfinthewoods@lemmy.ml 26 points 3 weeks ago

"Well, Steve [Jobs]… I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 25 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Did you also read that he taught himself code by reading out print outs in the trash? He wanted to close that ability to learn. Shut that open stuff down and make licenses, while he himself learned from others.

[–] ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 19 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

Didn't he come from a stupidly rich family and had access to a computer (at a time when it was like having access to a helicopter) whenever he wanted to learn and fiddle around? Isn't that where he got the print outs?

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[–] myfunnyaccountname@lemmy.zip 17 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

What?! No. I bet next you are gonna tell me lil Donnie Trump is a pedophile.

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