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Gates might have done a lot of unsound things in the past, but it's so nice to see he's using his money to help others, not to bathe in.

This is very exciting, and although some of these ideas sound crazy, something great might just come out of this.



What kind of unsound things?


Repeatedly lying in court, during a nationally televised trial was unsound. If he authorized presenting a fake video as evidence, that was "unsound", too.


Like running a criminal monopoly.

The problem with monopolies in the technical area is that they have a business reason to be incompatible (otherwise, they'll be cloned). That means they build over complex systems which have finicky compatibility problems.

For a typical example, see this: http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/update-on-odf-spreadshee...

The monopolist's need for obscurity and complexity doesn't just cost the developing company money, it hurts people trying to use their systems or interact with their systems.

Also, it hurts the speed of technological change. When an area is owned by a monopolist, the development investments are moved to an area that isn't owned yet -- paid for by milking the safe income. That means the owned areas (like web browsers) languish.

In short, unethical monopolies hurts my life quality in multiple ways, since I get to work with worse systems (well, not that I work with Windows any longer).

Edit: Grammar, clarity.




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