OSNews

Uh, Gates' illegal business practices have much to do with how he got his money in the first place. Giving some of that money away to purify his soul does not convince me of his high ethical standards.

Donations to charities can be claimed back on the massive amount of tax he pays. Essentially, it's the American tax payers who're giving the lion's share of what Bill is credited for.

Bill Gates: Damned if you, damned if you don't. So if he gives all this money away, he's a bad guy because he's clearly got another motive, i.e. tax breaks in return, etc. I say "clearly" because he is evil incarnate, right? :/

If he doesn't give any money away, then he's a greedy evil bastard.

I'm wondering what would make everyone happy? Do tell!

If you learn some history you will find that very many corporate crooks give extremely generously to charity AFTER they make vast fortunes ripping of the public. They do it to create a legacy of generosity and charity. This is so future generations forget what scum they really were. The fact that Gates does it so blatantly and with so much publicity shows his real nature.

Bill Gates donations are the moral equivalent of an ordinary person donating $5 to charity. In fact $5 is a greater real sacrifice for most people than donating $1.5 billion is to Gates.

Want to know why Gates is totally morally bankrupt?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,...

That article clearly shows how the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is far from a philanthropy or non-profit and is actually a money-making operation that invests in the same companies that pollute the environment and create the breeding ground for the diseases that they are actually claiming to be fighting such as malaria and polio.

Don't just dismiss my post. Read the eight-page article at the L.A. Times and then come back and comment.

When you have as much money as B. Gates does, you can make sure that articles such as the one I am pointing out do not get much airplay in radio or television which is how most people get their news.

Get informed. In every thread about Microsoft, you jump to its defense and makes you look like an uniformed Microsoft apologist.

Has Microsoft or B. Gates ever done wrong, according to you?

With the mountains of evidence available, it is hard to see how anyone could actually come to B. Gates' defense.

Edited 2008-07-27 10:55 UTC

That article is attempting to make a story where there isn't one. There is a move in charitable organization to do investment screening, the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation are one of many who aren't doing it yet.



I read the first two pages, and skimmed the rest. It is a terrible article, my one paragraph pretty much fully contains the breadth of the whole thing.



There are two kinds of people, the kind who love using technology to do things, and dont really care what they are using, and the "+5, Informed" crowd who get all religious about one thing or another. That mac up there in my avatar delivered to this day the best computing experience I have ever had. I have been using linux and loving it since it was a couple of floppies with a photocopied manual wrapped around it with an elastic.

I am very informed, and keep myself informed. So why do I defend microsoft so much? Cause nobody else does. The microsoft community lives in their bubble, and the linux guys live in their own bubble, and both are convinced the other bubble doesn't exist, or have any validity due to various reasons, all of which I disagree with. I am just as vocal in the microsoft community about linux and open source as I am on predominantly linux sites about how microsoft aren't made of pure evil, by idiots.



Microsoft has done plenty of things which were wrong. So has Apple, Sun, and IBM. Out of the bunch, IBM was probably the worst, they are the ones where I start questioning my stand on using technology for technologies sake.

The holocaust was run on IBM machines. IBM made money hand over fist from both sides during the war, but to this day has never admitted doing any wrong. IMO the worst thing MS has ever done is the way they killed Be. The two are simply not comparable.

I'm not bringing that up to marginalize the stuff that MS has done, but more to put it into perspective. If you choose to look at things the way you seem to want to, you need to realize that every company of any size has some pretty dark spots in its past, it is all a matter of degree, and how much has changed since those things happened.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is called a FOUNDATION for a reason: it's designed to be a self-sustaining organization that targets social and technological problems around the world. In order to be self-sustaining, the Foundation needs to invest its funds somewhere. Many, if not most of the people on this forum have a 401K invested in mutual funds. Ever stop to look at who your mutual fund invests in? You're going to find that most mutual funds -- unless they're specifically targeted at a particular industry or sector -- diversify their funds across a variety of sectors; that means technology, energy, financial, manufacturing, agriculture, commodities, etc. Meaning, many of you are investing in the same companies that the previous poster claimed to despise. It's VERY difficult to invest for growth in SUCCESSFUL companies without also investing in companies that some people consider socially irresponsible. Gates isn't involved in selecting the investments and, as the article points out, there is a "firewall" between the philanthropy and investment arms of the Foundation. I know it pains some FOSS advocates to admit that Gates is using money earned at Microsoft to improve the lives of people around the world -- but calling him "unethical" is just the height of arrogance and hypocrisy.

Very good, the only problem is, before the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation was started with encouragement from his wife, Bill Gates in a typical year gave 50,000 dollars in charity to the Seattle Public Library in the form of computers (running, of course, DOS and Windows) out of a billion-dollar income. When asked in an interview (paraphrasing the question) "why so little?" Bill Gates replied, "I don't have the time it takes to give charity."

So, when I hear about how charitable a person Bill Gates is, I remember the reason why the other robber barons, such as Rockafeller and Carnegie started similar foundations - to give themselves a "legacy" and a convenient tax shelter. Not because they did it out of the kindness of their hearts.

Edited 2008-07-27 14:32 UTC

If I had infinite money, it'd be pretty easy to give a couple billion away too. I'm more impressed by the person who makes $40K a year and considers himself rich, because he recognizes impoverished state that 80% of the world finds itself in, and so gives a sizable percentage of that away. If your gifts to charity put no financial strain on you, and require no sacrifice on your part, what is their purpose other than to feel good about yourself, and to look good to the rest of the world?

Let me know when Gates is giving away 99% of his income, then I'll recognize some sacrifice on his part and take his charity seriously.