I should have named the post "Bill Gates family values." Another asset to Gate's thievery is the impenetrability the Microsoft empire by a smaller company. The CEO of one of the companies that Gates ripped off (I cannot remember its name) said he "suspected" Gates of doing something underhanded but could not prove it. The government, on the other hand, had the evidence in the form of Microsoft memos and documents which they had gotten in the anti-trust probe, that proved criminality on Gates part but could not make public (to protect its own case). Gate's theft cost the smaller outfit five years of development and yet, it was not able to do anything about it.
Marta
alec ramsdell wrote:
> Marta Russell wrote:
>
> He did this by picking their brains in business
> >meetings where there was some kind of mutual business promise, but then
> >would run home with the goodies and do his own version of these smaller
> >companies had developed.
> >How could such a socially revered capitalist (ha) do this to the
> >Americans who admire him so? Will the bubble be burst? Will his face
> >appear on Time Magazine as criminal of the year?
>
> Yeah, I learned last night, from two friends of a friend, that Bill
> Gates was really hated in Silicon Valley's early days. The programers
> there just liked to smoke pot (pardon the drug reference) and exchange
> codes. Bill Gates was always pushing the business side of it on them,
> and they hated him for it. There's a documentary about Bill Gates that
> deals with this, though I don't know the name of it.
>
> Also, Bill Gates' dad is a hotshot Intellectual Property lawyer in D.C.
> This is how BG could swipe his whole project from IBM, from his early
> days working for IBM, developing their operating system. God bless the
> family.