Paul Allen's Microsoft Experience

theodp writes "Just in case Microsoft bashers don't have enough ammo, Robert X. Cringely has a couple of interesting tales in this week's column. The first explains how Bill Gates used Paul Allen's moonlighting at MITS to justify awarding himself 64% of Microsoft's stock vs. Allen's 36% (and Gates' failure to adjust the shares after he accepted a $10/hour part-time MITS job). The second heart-warming tale concerns a conversation Allen reportedly overheard late one night (as he was finishing up DOS 2.0) between Gates and Steve Ballmer discussing how to get Allen's Microsoft stock back if the Hodgkins disease Allen was battling killed him. Yikes."

Comments

Re:flamebate?

[MyLongNickName]

I am about as pro-Microsoft as you get on Slashdot. However, I do not find this to be flamebait. Granted, I am sure it will degenerate into troll-fest, with the biggest trolls getting +5 Insightful.

It is a very interesting discuission. How would Microsoft be different if Paul Allen was 50% (or more) owner. The personality of the company be much different, that much is for sure. Would Microsoft have had the moxy to take over the PC world like it did? Would the architecture be even remotely like it is today?

It is fascinating to me how much history depends on a few descisions. While this one may not be the largest in the world, it certainly has had a big impact on the PC world.

Re:Question for someone knowledgable

[pavera]

Either that or they could have created some other rules basically dilution rules, stating that their 64% were not subject to dilution (or diluted at a rate of 1% or something) and then issued a couple hundred million shares, basically diluting allens 36% down to nothing, and keeping their 64% stake. At the time back in '82 I'm sure MS only had a couple million shares on the books.. Basically it would work like this:

Say MS had 1 million shares, bill has 64% or 640,000, allen has 360,000... They pass a rule stating that their 640000 aren't subject to dilution (IE any new stock issues they get 64% of) and then proceed to issue 100 million shares... they now have 64,000,000 shares, they stick 35,640,000 shares in a trust to be given to future employees (or sold on the market, or whatever) and allen is left with his 360,000 shares which are now 1/3 of 1% of the company. Thus, he (or his heirs) are effectively removed from any meaningful involvment in the company, and they don't have to give anything (cash or otherwise to them).

This would be totally legal, and 100% possible given majority voting rights.

Re:flamebate?

[Frumious Wombat]

If you accept a Forbes article from 1999 or so, the culture of modern Microsoft is mostly Balmer's creation. Bill may have had the vision, but it's Balmer's Napoleon complex (if you believe Forbes, literal Napoleon complex) that enable Microsoft to become the behemoth it is.

Once Balmer was on board, Allen might not have been able to do much to influence Microsoft's culture.

MS grew more evil when Ballmer stepped in

[IvyKing]

I do have memories of MS being a halfways decent company at the same time that DRI was having some issues with arrogance - but that's when Allen was still pretty much in charge. During the DOS 2.0 days, MS was willing to allow customers other than IBM to package their own version of MS-DOS - Compaq's DOS v3.31 was a notable example. It may have been CPQ's DOS v3.31 embarrassed MS so much, that they decided put a stop to vendor specific versions of DOS.

After Ballmer stepped in, support for fringe platforms (i.e. not strictly PC-compatible) was pretty much dropped, up through 2.0, MS-DOS ran on quite a variety of 8086/8 boxes.

Now to think of it, MS dropping Xenix happened about this same time frame.