Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates to Step Down from Microsoft
Geoffreyerffoeg writes "According to Microsoft PressPass, Bill Gates will be leaving his role at Microsoft in July 2008. He'll be staying with the company, but is also moving to a more fulltime position with the Gates Foundation. 'Microsoft Corp. today announced that effective July 2008 Bill Gates, chairman, will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company announced a two-year transition process to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates' daily responsibilities, and said that after July 2008 Gates would continue to serve as the company's chairman and an adviser on key development projects.' CTO Ray Ozzie will assume Gates' role of Chief Software Architect, and CTO Craig Mundie will also take on more leadership responsibility."
Give the boy credit, for planning to devote his time to charity work.
....to create a new Microsoft icon for /.
I felt a slight chill as I read the article, realizing that if Bill Gates is stepping down, he must be getting kinda older....which means I'm getting kinda older.
It's been an interesting ride through the years with Microsoft.
Thanks for everything, Bill, and best of luck with your philanthropy. My city in particular (Windsor, ON, Canada) has benefitted from the B&MG foundation with new computers in our library for public use.
Anyone can walk on water....think WINTERTIME.
Let's see:
Gates - creates world's most successful company, becomes world's richest man, leaves day job to spend billions on charity.
Us - Made lame borg jokes for 5 years, finally released a browser that's better than IE if you ignore all the unfixed copy/paste bugs. Convinced a few people that Unix sucked less than Windows.
Dude, I think *he* won.
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Gates DID make computers affordable.
Fair weather and calm seas on your new journey...
MBC1977
(US Marine, College Student, Future Business Owner, and Good Guy!)
Regards,
MBC1977,
Being the chairman of the board is very different from being an employee for a company. The chairman of the board is _not_ an employee, he is an owner and is supposed to represent the interests of the owners. Owners != Employees. Basically, sounds like Bill is stepping down from his day-to-day activities managing the organization. But he still has billions of dollars tied up in an ownership position -- it would be incredibly stupid of him not to protect that investment.
Visualize the world of wine
I would just like to say thanks to Bill for his continuing work with the Gates foundation. I don't see the other multibillionares (Google guys, Redhat guys, Ellison, Jobs, etc) stepping up to the plate and making any commitment EVEN CLOSE to the level he has. All I see those guys doing is buying fighter planes, boats, sports teams and big houses. Good luck Bill!
Just a picture of a chair. It'd be beatifully subtle, but sufficiently childish.
I think he's serious. Gates did force a power-hungry company on us - but he forced a power-hungry company that made a profit from popularizing the personal computer. I doubt the PC would be quite as popular today as it is if it weren't for Gates.
Bill Gates is doing the same thing that Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and the other 19th century robber barons did - he is transitioning from the persona of a despised, cut-throat, take-no-prisoners monopolist to that of a benign philanthropist, and spending the billions he acquired in order to ensure his legacy. And just like the robber barons the 1800s, I have no doubt that Gates will be viewed as a wonderful benefactor of humanity a hundred years from now. Only the historians will remember how many people and companies he mercilessly crushed to create his fortune.
Gates is still ambitious.
Bill Gates has achieved what most people only dream of in terms of their life's ambitions. What do most people want? Money? Sure, but that is not the end of everything. Most (normal) people actually want to make a contribution to society/the world; to leave a legacy, if you will. (Granted, Bill has already done that.)
So when you have succeeded beyond your wildest ambitions, then what? Gates cannot actually spend his money on himself fast enough. There comes a point when you start to want to spend it on your legacy instead. Hence, the charity funding. But this is still ambition.
(Of course, I wish more people would reach that stage.)
Yes -- brilliant! You've captured the essences of the Slashdot v Microsoft "drama".
And congratulations to Bill for having the sense to move on with his life. Microsoft may not be the most ethical of companies, but they are no Enron. Bill Gates is no Kenneth Lay. If you want some other perspective, compare Gates with Jobs. I don't know what Larry Ellison is doing these days, but in the past, his main "philanthropic" ambition was to donate to an anti-aging research foundation.
Is this sig nificant?
Like him or not, Bill Gates did a lot for personal computers, and honestly, those of us who use them and even the world. MicroSoft wrote a lot of good compilers and a lot of good programs, and while many may gripe, windows, windows98, windowsNT and windowsXP were pretty damn good products.
Bill was rare in that he had vision and the ability to do technical things, and was a very driven person. He was the guy we all loved, then when he got rich he was the guy we all loved to 'hate'. But I remember what it was like before him, and he really did help change the world.
At this point the only person left from the original shakers and movers is Steve Jobs. Steve isn't much of a technical person, but he has been a visionary in the past equal to Bill. I have to wonder how much longer till he bows out?
And to be completely honest, it makes me wonder what the next bunch of 'snotty nosed kids' (as my compsci prof used to call Gates, Jobs, and Woz) will come up with. Every time an Era ends, a new one starts after all...
This will be my final post with slashdot, i'll be moving to digg for my news after today.
This guy wants to quit his day to day responsibilities to give away his money to the less fortunate and all you guys want to do is bash him. Hey, I like Linux, I own a Mac and have tons of Windows experience, but just because you don't like his business practices or his OS dosn't give you the right to belittle him. Will you manage to give away 80% of your fortune before you die? Didn't think so fucktard!
Give the guy a break, he's one of the few modern day humanitarians!
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
You must be new here, etc. etc.
Thing is, the Slashdot-crowd is becoming increasingly singleminded when it comes to issues such as Copyright Infringment, Micro$oft (never forget the dollar sign, or you'll never blend in!) and the Bush Administration. I blame the moderation system. Pimping Linux and Booing Bill, if done with some degree of artfulness, is a surefire way to get modded up. Why take the contrarian position if your point of view is going to be modded "Troll" or "Flamebait" in a matter of nanoseconds?
For what it's worth, I agree with you. Microsoft's business practices can be questioned (though they're not much worse than other companies in similar situations), but the humanitarian efforts of Bill Gates should not be underestimated or scoffed at. Sure, he's still filthy rich despite how much he has given, but if he was as evil as many slashdotters would like to have it, why wouldn't he keep it all? Or spend the money to build an evil headquarter in an inactive volcano?
One of a Kind <-- You probably won't be interested..
Gates did force a power-hungry company on us - but he forced a power-hungry company that made a profit from popularizing the personal computer. I doubt the PC would be quite as popular today as it is if it weren't for Gates.
Frankly, I think the PC became popular in spite of Bill Gates, not because of him.
We should really thank IBM, for creating a PC design that (unlike Apple's) could be "commoditized", and then Compaq, for creating the clone industry. That's what really led to the popularity of the PC, not the mediocre software that ran on it.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Hi, I'm posting anonymously because I've moderated in the thread.
I use a modified threshold for viewing comments (-2 to 'funny', for example), and I view only at level 5. Of the messages currently modded +5 for me, there are seven posts that are positive or congradulatory regarding Bill Gates. There are three posts that are simply factual (clarifying his role as Chairman, for example), and zero posts that bitch about Gates/Microsoft (in other words, posts that are following the "surefire way to get modded up).
I think any population as large as the Slashdot crowd is going to have it's supply of vocal morons, but there are quite a few thoughtful people around as well.
People always bring this up so what the hell I have karma to burn....
1) Bill Gates didn't give one cent to charity until after the trial started.
2) The foundation is not Bill Gates.
3) Bill Gates does not take money out of his pocket to give to charity. He gives stock to the foundation which then sells the stock and gives away the money. Bill is giving away POTENTIAL INCOME not money he already has.
4) Bill still gives away a smaller percent of his fortune then most regular americans do, he just happens to be obscenely rich due mainly to his lack of "business ethics".
5) The bible is peppered with sayings about how the poor man who gives away a shekel is more moral then the rich who gives more. The phrase "give till it hurts" comes to mind and I don't think anybody is arguing that Bill is hurting.
6) Many otherwise sick, deranged, sleazy, people have given lots of money to charities. Osama immediately comes to mind as does Ken Lay and a countless drug lords in south america. Giving away some small percentage of you money does not undo all the harm you have done. People who have gotten ill gains frequently give a lot of money to charity to try and win public support.
7) If I make 30K a year and I give away 10% of my income I am going to suffer. That three thousand dollars would be three months worth of rent in most places in the US. If I was worth a 100 billion dollars and I gave away 90% of money I would still have 10 BILLION DOLLARS. If I gave away 99% of my money I would still have a billion dollars. Can you live on a billion dollars? I know I can.
So excuse me if I am not all that impressed that Bill G after charging monopoly prices to billions of people gives away two or three percent of his earning to charity. I am glad you are so impressed though. His PR machine must be working.
evil is as evil does
What's funny is you just posted a comment about how messed up the moderation system is, and yet you get modded up to +5 for pointing out the flaws, and supporting Bill Gates. Guess it's not as messed up as you thought it was.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I call bullshit. /governments/ not the people. At least the Foundation can give it to independent organizations/people.
the quote "Don't forget, for every Bill Gates, there have to be many "less fortunate" to be exploited^W marketed to" just bleeds ignorance.
1. Almost all of the people he is trying to help via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wouldn't be helped by American tax dollars anyway. And before you say "foreign aid", remember that the money we give to other countries goes to the
2. I'm not going to defend goods/money laundering, but do you really live in such a fantasy world that you think that if the US Government had a bunch more money that anything would be better? They would waste it on more earmarks and pork barrel crap and we would still have the same problems. The amount of funding going to important areas is basically kept to as high as it can be without cutting into the politicians pet projects (read, pork for their state) but they won't put it low enough to piss people off, because they might then catch on to the scam.
For every bill gates there are LESS, less fortunate people. New industries are created (example, a huge section of the IT market), and tons of new jobs are created. Just because there arent as many people as wealthy as him does not mean he has done something bad.
Also, maybe you should get into your head just what "less fortunate means".
We are so pampered in the US and don't understand that "less fortunate" here basically means "not living comfortably". "Less fortunate" in say, Africa, parts of Asia, parts of the middle east, etc means at risk of death a lot of the time.
Quite frankly, I am glad that the money is going someplace other than the Government, just about anywhere else would be better.
Constant Pie econonics is FUD
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
He gave to charity long before the trial. Stock does have a real value. So giving away lots of stock = giving away lots of money.
He's already given away over 60% of his net worth which is way more than any regular joe I know.
His foundation is his AND his wifes. Yes she has a lot to do with it but where does the money come from. Hint...NOT FROM HER!
Their foundation (I just learned this today form NPR) is funding 90% of the world effort to get rid of polio. That's one effort of many but if they succeed at just that one it will be huge.
It matters not what you think of MS and how he got his money. He's doing a lot of good things with it. His wife doesn't get all the credit either. His father also had a lot to do with it growing up.
Bill Gates didn't start selling off his Microsoft stock until he retired as CEO of the company. As it turns out, he was a busy man and managing giving away billions of dollars is ridiculously difficult. It wasn't until his father and his wife showed up on the scene and he stepped down as CEO that he was able to manage the process.
2) The foundation is not Bill Gates.
No, its the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. She brought a mid-level manager salary and a room full of IKEA furniture worth of assets to the party.
3) Bill Gates does not take money out of his pocket to give to charity. He gives stock to the foundation which then sells the stock and gives away the money. Bill is giving away POTENTIAL INCOME not money he already has.
Stock is not potential income - it has real value. Just because it fluctuates according to the market doesn't mean that its meaningless - by that argument, being paid in dollars isn't real money either because your salary fluctuates daily relative to the euro. The fact of the matter is, all of Bill Gate's money is in non-liquid assets. All rich people's money is in non-liquid assets, except for a few old-school European banking families, and their real assets are debtors note which are less liquid than stock is.
4) Bill still gives away a smaller percent of his fortune then most regular americans do, he just happens to be obscenely rich due mainly to his lack of "business ethics".
Patently untrue. His foundation has distributed substantially less money than he has given them, but that's by design. First - believe it or not, giving away billions meaningfully is hard. Most philanthropic projects look for grants in the million to ten million range. Each one has to be vetted and held accountable to their use of the money, or you're doing more harm than good with it. A management structure to handle that is amazingly complicated. At the same time, giving away all his money to various charities is incredibly harmful - for a decade, charities will receive tens of billions of dollars in extra income and then it will just one day stop and those charities will effectively stop functioning. Part of the purpose of the foundation is to ensure reinvestment of the estate to make sure that it can be a force for good over the next century.
5) The bible is peppered with sayings about how the poor man who gives away a shekel is more moral then the rich who gives more. The phrase "give till it hurts" comes to mind and I don't think anybody is arguing that Bill is hurting.
You can't spend money that fast. Seriously. BillG could say today "I'm going to spend 10 billion dollars in Africa by the end of the year" and the only way he could do it is to literally drop it out of airplanes. BillG has announced the intentions of his estate and he will give it all away, but in a structured and meaningful way instead of just wasting it.
6) Many otherwise sick, deranged, sleazy, people have given lots of money to charities. Osama immediately comes to mind as does Ken Lay and a countless drug lords in south america. Giving away some small percentage of you money does not undo all the harm you have done. People who have gotten ill gains frequently give a lot of money to charity to try and win public support.
Osama kills people. Ken Lay knowingly destroyed the financial security of tens of thousands of employees and countless shareholders. The CEO of Dow Chemical knowingly covered up waste dumps which poisoned hundreds of thousands of people. The leadership of oil companies knowingly apply political pressure to force a continuous state of war that affects close to a billion people. WalMart leadership (and Apple's if you believe the recent news stories) leverage sweatships and effective slave labor to pad their profits. If you assume every charge
What does legal have to do with right or wrong?
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?