why does everyone hate bill gates and microsoft?

Question

he said he will give away 90% of his money and has helped save millions of lives..yet people hate him...is it just soure grapes...

Answer 1

Its got little to do with the fact that he's rich. In the old days when computers were still new, every company that made computers also wrote their own operating system, and you'd have to learn a language to be able to use it.
Bill Gates had a flash of genius inspiration; he realised that if you could write an operating system that did all the hard work computers would be easier to use, because they could be used by people who couldn't learn code. The more people who could use them the more you could sell.
The Windows O.S. was revolutionary, and it was a genuinely good idea. You don't have to be able to write code to use a computer.
The problem is that Gates started up Microsoft and it is a notoriously aggressive company. Its not just that MS want a big market share, its that they want complete and total control of the market and of the way that you use their product on your pc.
This attitude was a huge split away from the traditional direction of computing. Originally if you wrote an interesting piece of code you'd just make it available for everyone to use, you didn't patent it. You owned any program that you wrote, you could sell those programs and manuals for them, but you didn't own the individual bits of code because its like trying to own individual genes thet make up DNA.
So now there are two different schools of thought; there is Open Source at one end of the spectrum, Microsoft at the other and everyone else in between. The Open Source Project makes its operating system, Linux available absolutely free of charge; and traditionally all programs that run on Linux are also free. They are also freely distributed. Anyone can give them away or sell them. The only restriction is that if you alter the code in any way, you have to send a copy to the original author and detail the changes you made, and you have to change the name of your version. Generally people don't add malware to Open Source software and the system works very well. The Open Source Project makes a profit of several hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, despite the fact that they distribute the product free of charge, the income comes from donations, a small profit from distributing discs, and a profit on each paper manual thats sold.
Compare that with the attitude of Microsoft, who have been caught hacking and stealing other peoples software and passing it off as their own; who charge £300 for an office suite (Open Office frm www.openoffice.org is free)
and £120 for an O.S.; and more worryingly won a case in the European courts that means that a licence agreement (which is a legal contract) can now be altered or backdated at their whim.
Effectively that means that you could believe that you are acting legally by installing your legal Windows '98 on two computers because thats what your original copy of the licence says, but you could still end up in court because Microsoft changed the licence agreement and they don't even have to tell you they did it, or what the new agreement is!
Unfortunately, Bill Gates handed his company over to a bunch of jackals to run and has done nothing to sort it out. It doesn't matter how much of his money he gives to charity, people aren't impressed by that when they've paid out several hundreds of pounds for the licence to use one of his products only to have technical support and updates withdrawn.
Whats worse is that when hackers atteck Microdofts' products, they are not affecting Microsoft. Beginners are never going to stop using it because Linux is only an alternative if you know about computers and know how to do things like alter the registry and write basic code. Hackers only affect people who are just trying to use their pc. The whole thing is a real shame.

Answer 2

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer weren't good programmers, but were rich and saw business potential and bought a few pieces of software from a guy in a warehouse (literally) and slightly adapted to the altair computer line, and didnt sell the software but "licensed" it. They basically didn't invent computers, just a business model of selling software. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created a computer from the ground up. We are talking about a prototype that was made from wood and an old tv. It had homemade software. These guy were poor and build a computer in their garage. In fact, some of the units of the first computer were made in wozniak's garage. Also, wozniak was the brains of the operation. He build the computer and the software, jobs just sold it. The innards of the computers were all made in the usa and were signed by the people that made them. The fanboys only remember those times, but forget how evil Jobs became without Wozniak. All apple stuff is launched using the original windows launch method. They push a new, broken and unfinished product out the door which they will fix in the upcoming months as fanboys gather. Actually, M$ is the lesser of the two evils since their licenses are returnable and are not tied to equipment nor horribly restrictive. Even their most restrictive license, the xbox, is still mild compared to the iphone's. Real nerds per say, like Linus Torvalds, who wrote a unix like system from scratch, were-as bsd Unix licensing was sold and resold. Unix is now managed by the Open Software Foundation. Open doesn't mean free, as in MacOSX. Linux is part of GNU/Free Software Foundation. The systems are compatible with minor changes, but licensing is very different. You can take BSD and sell it for a profit, like Novell. You cant sell linux. Redhat offers a support contract for its OS, so that you can get updates and custom software made, but its also available made free and open at the same time.

Answer 3

Microsoft is big business.
Big business is inherently evil. It is based on exploitation and profit.
Bill Gates's charity work is very impressive but he is not Microsoft.

Microsoft is RICH yet what's with this new Genuine Windows Notification that they made people download as part of an 'urgent update'. It was underhand, money-grabbing scam, and, of course, typical of big business.

They make enough money from the monopoly they have over PC operating systems. They should GIVE the damn software away!

Answer 4

people see microsoft as this giant multiglobal monopoly that has a strangle hold on the computer industry prices - people always want things for free and when they cant look to blame - yet if we didnt have microsoft the industry would still be retarded as would our computer interfaces!

Bill Gates is someone to be admired - sure he has made mistakes and at times been ruthless but no one is without mistakes and a mark of his character is he has worked to correct his

He doesnt boast about his charity work like many celebrities instead he gets on with it donating billions and really making a difference
He is a guy that has and will continue to leave a really positive mark on this world -

Answer 5

Bill Gates is a great guy. Microsoft is a Dog. They are in trouble beacuse they aren't releasing Vista untill next year. Furthermore, they are loosing in the battle of the web to Yahoo and Google. They need to buy one of these companies to if they intend to survive in the battle of search engines and being profitable

Answer 6

Probably because he his made money off the blood sweat & tears of a dedicated work force.
And the possibility that Microsoft are creating some of the viruses to sell their anti-virus programmes.
With the amount of money involved with Microsoft there WILL be corruption somewhere.
I know he said he'd give the money. He'll be judged better when it happens.

Answer 7

I reckon it's cos microsoft have a monopoly of the software business, other operating systems such as linux are struggling for position.

In a way though it has made computers so much easier. Nearly all software comes with microsoft compatability, convenient eh.

Answer 8

Let's put it this way- How many microsoft employees does it take to change a light bulb? NONE- they just make darkness 'state-of-the-art'!

Rent 'Pirates of the Silicone Valley' to get a feel for Bill Gates.

Answer 9

I didn't know people hated him, why do they? I use windows, I don't care who 'invented' it.

I have to say though, if he gave away 90% of his money, would that not be enough to wipe out world hunger? I'm asking for an answer not an argument.

Answer 10

I think Bill Gates followed his dreams so that doesn't mean any thing I just think that he is doing the right thing. Every penny counts. I bet you anything that he is thinking" Yep i'm not going to wipe out anything in the world. " Though he's going to help!