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Bill Gates |
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 Bill Gates
Biography
Gates was born in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates, Sr., a corporate lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates, board member of First Interstate Bank, Pacific Northwest Bell and the national board of United Way.
Gates's sister Kristi Anne was born in 1953. Throughout grade school, Gates did poorly in penmanship, civics, and other subjects he found trivial, but got top grades in science and mathematics. Toward the end of his elementary years, Gates started to have severe behavioral problems that worried his parents and teachers enough that Gates had to go to a psychiatrist.
Gates attended Lakeside School, Seattle's most exclusive prep school, where he was able to develop his programming skills on the school's minicomputer. He later went on to study at Harvard University, but dropped out without graduating to pursue what would become a lifelong career in software development.
While he was a student at Harvard, he co-authored with Paul Allen the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 (the first commercially successful personal computer) in the mid 1970s. It was inspired by BASIC, an easy-to-learn programming language developed at Dartmouth College for teaching purposes.
Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children, Jennifer Katharine Gates (born April 26, 1996), Rory John Gates (born May 23, 1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (born September 14, 2002). They live in a very large earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington. It is a very modern 21st century house in the "Pacific lodge" style, with advanced electronic systems everywhere. In one respect though it is more like an 18th or 19th century mansion: It has a large private library with a domed reading room. While it does have a classic flavor the home has many unique qualities. Visitors are surveyed and given a microchip upon entrance. This small chip sends signals throughout the house, and the rooms temperature and other factors change according to the preset user preferences.
In 1994, Gates acquired the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci; as of 2003 it was on display at the Seattle Art Museum.
In 1997, Gates was the victim of a bizarre extortion plot by Chicago resident Adam Quinn Pletcher. Gates testified at the subsequent trial. Pletcher was convicted and sentenced in July 1998 to six years in prison.
In his religious views, it is likely that Gates is agnostic. Asked by a Time interviewer whether he believed in God, Gates replied "I don't have any evidence on that."
According to Forbes, Gates donated money to the 2004 presidential campaign of George W. Bush. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Gates is cited as having donated at least $33,335 to over 50 political campaigns during the 2004 election cycle.
On December 14, 2004, Bill Gates joined Berkshire Hathaway's board, formalizing the relationship between him and Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway is a conglomerate that includes Geico (automobile insurance), Benjamin Moore (paint) and Fruit of the Loom (textiles). Gates also serves on the board of Icos, a Bothell biotech company.
On March 2, 2005, the foreign office of the United Kingdom announced that Gates would receive the title of Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his contribution to enterprise in the United Kingdom and his efforts in poverty reduction around the world. Because he is not a British citizen, he cannot use the title of "Sir," but may put letters "KBE" (Knight of the British Empire) after his name.
Microsoft Corporation
In 1975, Gates and Allen co-founded Micro-Soft, later Microsoft Corporation, to market their version of BASIC, called Microsoft BASIC. It was the primary interpreted computer language of the MS-DOS operating system, and was key to Microsoft's early commercial success.
In February 1976, Gates wrote the Open Letter to Hobbyists, which shocked the computer hobbyist community by asserting that a commercial market existed for computer software. Gates stated in the letter that software should not be copied without the publisher's permission, which he equated to piracy. While legally correct, Gates's proposal was unprecedented in a community that was influenced by its ham radio legacy and hacker ethic, in which innovations and knowledge were freely shared in the community. Nevertheless, Gates was right about the market prospects and his efforts paid off: Microsoft Corporation became one of the world's most successful commercial enterprises, and a key player in the creation of a retail software industry.
Microsoft's key moment came when in the late 1970s, IBM was planning to enter the personal computer market with its IBM Personal Computer (PC), which was released in 1981. Gates licensed MS-DOS, which it had acquired from a local computer manufacturer, to IBM. The story of how Microsoft acquired the original system (QDOS) has inspired much folklore, which often portrays Gates pouncing on a trivial mistake by Digital Research and stealing that company's lead in microcomputer operating systems. It is frequently cited by those who accuse Gates of unethical business practices. In reality, IBM did approach Digital Research for a version of CP/M for its upcoming IBM PC, and spoke to Gary Kildall's wife Dorothy. IBM representatives wanted Dorothy to sign their standard non-disclosure agreement, which Dorothy considered overly burdensome. IBM then returned to talk to Microsoft. Gates obtained rights to a cloned design of CP/M, QDOS, from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer products, licensed it to IBM, and MSDOS/IBMDOS was born. Later, IBM discovered that Gates' operating system could have infringement problems with CP/M, contacted Kildall, and in exchange for a promise not to sue, made an agreement that CP/M would be sold along with IBMDOS when the IBM PC was released. The price set by IBM for CP/M was $250 and for MSDOS/IBMDOS it was $40. Obviously, MSDOS/IBMDOS outsold CP/M many times over, eventually becoming the standard. By marketing MS-DOS aggressively to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft gained unprecedented visibility in the microcomputer industry, even rivalling IBM.
During the following years, Gates used his company's growing resources to displace competitors such as WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3, among many others. It is alleged (although never explained in detail) that Gates instructed Microsoft programmers to include special code in one of the MS-DOS versions to make Lotus 1-2-3 produce errors, making it appear to the users as if Lotus's software was the problem when it actually wasn't.
In the mid-1980s Gates became excited about the possibilities of compact disc for storage, and sponsored the publication of the book CD-ROM: The New Papyrus that promoted the idea of CD-ROM.
In the late 1980s, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a more advanced operating system, OS/2. The operating system was marketed in connection with a new hardware design, the PS/2, that was proprietary and secret to IBM. As the project progressed, Gates oversaw continuing friction with IBM over the system's design, hardware support, and user interface. Ultimately he came to believe that IBM wanted to marginalize Microsoft from having any input in OS/2's development. On May 16, 1991 Gates announced to Microsoft employees that the OS/2 partnership was over and Microsoft would henceforth focus its platform efforts on Windows and the NT kernel. In the ensuing years OS/2 fell to the side and Windows became the favored PC platform.
Some years later, Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser displaced Netscape's Navigator, in a turn of events that many attributed to Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows at no extra charge. An opposing view is that the inclusion in Windows was less important in Internet Explorer's adoption than Microsoft's improvement of the browser's features to a level comparable with Navigator.
As the architect of Microsoft's product strategy, Gates has aggressively broadened the company's range of products and, once it has obtained a leading position in a category, has vigorously defended that position. His and other Microsoft executives' strategic decisions have more than once drawn the concern of competition regulators, and in some cases have been ruled illegal.
In 2000, Gates promoted long-time friend and Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer to the role of Chief Executive Officer and took on the role of "Chief Software Architect".
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
With his wife, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization. The foundation's grants have provided funds for underrepresented minority college scholarships, AIDS prevention, diseases that strike mainly in the third world, and other causes. The Foundation currently provides 90% of the world budget for the attempted eradication of poliomyelitis, the World Health Organization having 'moved on' to other diseases. In June 1999, Gates and his wife donated US$5 billion to their foundation, the largest single donation ever by living individuals. He has donated more than US$100 million to help children suffering from AIDS. On January 26, 2005, it was announced that the Foundation had made a further contribution of US$750 million to the international Vaccine Fund to help fight diseases such as diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, poliomyelitis and yellow fever.
Critics have called this a response to negative public outcry over the seemingly monopolistic and anti-competitive practices of his company, but those close to Gates say that he had long expressed his plan to eventually give away most (in 1997 the Washington Post reported 90%) of his large fortune. Critics also say that it is done purely as a tax write off to hide money and refrain from paying his share.
Accolades
- Honorary KBE from the United Kingdom announced, 2005
- Top 100 influential people in media, the Guardian, 2001
- The Sunday Times power list, 1999
Upside Elite 100, Ranked 2nd, 1999
- Top 50 Cyber Elite, TIME magazine, Ranked 1st, 1998
- Top 100 most powerful people in sports, The Sporting News, Ranked 28th, 1997
- CEO of the year, Chief Executive Officers magazine, 1994
- Entomologists have named the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor.
Criticism
- Bill Gates is often accused of fraudulently obtaining control of the original DOS operating system for Intel 8088 based personal computers and building his empire out of stolen goods.
- Microsoft has used illegal methods to disable the competing DR-DOS operating system when run with their own Windows 3.1 GUI.
- Microsoft has played unfair technical and business tricks to insidiously sabotage the development of IBM-Microsoft's joint venture OS/2 operating system, in order to be able to sell its own creature, the comparatively primitive Windows 1.0 graphic environment.
- Critics often portray him in scenarios or bearing insignia graphically reminiscent of Nazism, alluding parallels between Microsoft's business practices and totalitarian movements.
- The mugshot from Gates' arrest for reckless driving has been a source of amusement for free software fans and other critics of Microsoft.
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