Gates Donates $15M to Preserve Computing History

Dan-DAFC writes "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is donating the sum of $15 million to the Computer History Museum in California, according to the BBC. The money is the biggest single gift in the museum's $125 million fund-raising campaign, which is still $50 million short of its target. The funds raised will be used to add more exhibits and educational programs."

Comments

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[dedazo]

Tell us about it, PyroGx1133. Did the Microsoft Special Forces raid your village and kill your family back when you lived among the hill people of the north?

Re:In other words...

[Hyperlink Processor]

A quick look shows they've donated over $28B [wikipedia.org] and over $1B each year.

Is that counting the monetary equivalent of "donated software"?

Re:In other words...

[iceanfire]

linux is *in it self* the donation. How much money did Linus sell linux for? NOTHING. Add to this the time contributions of the entire community and you have something that rivals gate's contributions. Linux is a boon the the economy, freedom... all all the other buzzwords that are alive and well in American politics today.

Re:In other words...

[a.d.trick]

I agree. I think that things like this are good. However, this does not mean that Microsoft is not guilty of owning a monopoly and killing compettion.

Government-sponsered projects

[Uukrul]

That's a lot of money doing a lot of good, and is probably better spent than most Government-sponsered projects

I'm from Spain. We have a very good health care system for free, but it costs a lot of money. Some of that money goes to buy Microsoft products for the computer that it's in the desk of a lot of doctors and a lot more for administrative purposes.

So I'm not very impressed that they spend some of the money earned from our social security systems to preserve some old computers in the United States.

It's my opinion.

15 mil is like 20 bucks to you and me

[Danathar]

Although I highly applaud Bill G for giving 15 Mil to the museum, giving 15 Mil is like me opening my wallet and pulling out a 20 dollar bill. Gates probably Makes $20 mil every hour or two in profit off of dividens.

If he was going to contribute 15 mil, why not the whole 50 mil they needed? If a begger is asking for $1.00 and you have it to spare AND intend on giving it to the begger, why only give 30 cents?

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[humina]

Why is the parent post moderated "troll"? Be realistic, people -- this is one of the prime motivations for wealthy individuals and corporations to make charitable donations. Not the only motivation, mind you, but anyone who thinks it isn't a consideration in a multi-million-dollar donation is seriously naive.

I call it like it is and someone mods me troll. Brilliant. Maybe if I post it again I can get smarter mods:

I think gates used/uses his money to improve his tainted image. The best way to get money out of Jobs and others might be to start a personal campaign against them. The only way out of it would therefore be public donations.

I'd like to see a tech company use some of their donation money to improve the workplace and pay of those people that do the soldering and assembly of the actual computers. Personally I'd like to see the money go towards improving the future instead of preserving the past. I guess I'll just have to flame bill a bit more in order to get the money out of him.