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."
Time to sell off my M$ stock...
-Shippy
That borg icon finally got to him ... should be ashamed of yourselves!
Same as the old Boss.
Thank you Bill, for everything you've done for the industry and the world.
I for one, welcome my new Ray Ozzie overlord
Hes going to run for president.
Give the boy credit, for planning to devote his time to charity work.
I bet he just wants to make sure he makes it into heaven after all...
I'm Rocco. I'm the +5 Funny man.
July 2008 - is that before or after Vista ships?
Jesus said to his disciples: "If you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one" - Luke 22:36
What part(s) of my resume should I brush up when applying for the job of "master villian and arch-nemisis of WonderTorvalds?"
On a more serious note, there are a lot of people with large emotional investments pent up in disliking Mr. Gates. The transition is going to be tough. It's almost like Inigo Montoya at the end of The Princess Bride. Maybe they should turn to piracy?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Whatever will we do with the Borg-Gates icon?
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
"I believe with great wealth comes great responsibility"
Who would have guessed that Bill Gates was also Spider-man?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
But his morality is the only morality that company has. At all. This move will make Microsoft into more of a money grubbing, profit-centered, fuck anybody who gets in our way, sociopathic corporation. And they didn't have very far to fall to begin with.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
....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.
-----
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,
Flying chairs, thrown by a Donkey-kong like figure with Balmer's face. Yep, I could just see that being a standard screen saver in Vista.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If analogies could ever be valid (warning; this one isn't) Microsoft is still the 800 lb gorilla and its cane is a fucking solid steel girder. Makes you wonder who Mario is...
Microsoft is anything but irrelevant. Take a look at their market share.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
He's going to stay chairman.
He's replacing Ballmer!?!? O.o
So how long can he stay out of the game? Not long I suspect.
just wait until he notices his company following antitrust law, behaving ethically, paying to license code they use.
he'll swoop right in and put a stop to that real fast
That said, I think it is time to sell off the rest of my shares, since the man who gave the world Lotus Notes is now the Chief Software Architect at Microsoft. Sorry Ray, you are a good guy, but I cant forgive you for Notes, my man.
He's got a loooooong list to clear out before he can get positive on karma.
Read radical news here
You left out 'shapes computing the world over' (on the desktop).
Gates kicks ass. He'd be the perfect role model if it weren't for some of his less savoury feats.
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.)
I thought when you get that card you have to pay everyone else $50. And yes, I do think that is appropriate use of money.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Microsoft 'leans on its entrenched install base to survive' in the same way that Rupert Murdoch 'would be nothing without his billions of dollars and his global media network'. You're right, but it's not very meaningful.
Far from it. Microsoft's market share doesn't mean much if the company no longer innovates and takes seven years to release a new version of its flagship product. This is the tech market. That is a hugely long time. People don't take this company seriously anymore. Microsoft was once written as the threatening beast, but they are now mentioned sarcastically, often as punchline. Companies and small startups no longer fear them. The fire and energy is at Google and Apple.
Their stock price is flatline, they have an out-of-touch CEO, their #1 product hasn't been updated in six years, they bleed money in markets they don't belong in, companies internally refer to Vista and the process behind it as "broken" (See here). Hell, this news comes two days after the worst Patch Tuesday of 2006. I argue that they absolutely are irrelevant. All they can do now is lean on their entrenched install base, and that means they're no longer moving forward. Sadly, it makes them a relic.
Linux will continue to gobble up servers, and Windows will continue to sort of lamely deflate in the desktop market. Analysts are actually predicting a massive increase in Apple market share, as much as triple. But more importantly, the direction in tech now is the web and digital media--Google and Apple's #1 markets. Windows is "meh."
"Sufferin' succotash."
I guess some could be excited about Gates leaving, but do we really want Dick Cheney, er, I mean Ballmer to be in charge of things?
his latest Apple branded product - the iWin corporate management app. (co-branded with Bil-b-gone).
Typical of Job's Keynote addresses, the iWin app is ready for the market and has shipped-out.
Fashion designers everywhere are tooling up to meet the anticipated black turtleneck demand and are cutting the production of pocket protectors and short-sleeve dress shirts.
Steve Ballmer was last seen applying for a job with Disney.
When asked about his thoughts on this position change, Ballmer was quoted:
"I'll fucking KILL him!"
...how many Slashdotians have noticed that the blog mentioned in an earlier story from a Microsoft engineer on the delays of Vista has been removed? It says it was without pressure, but I'd probably type that too if Steve Balmer were in the room, armed with heavy-duty chairs.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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?
Hey, they can quit anytime they want. Windows is not dope.
So the man spent 30 years crushing the competition using brutal and sometimes unethical business practices. Big deal. Everybody on the losing end whines but secretly loves to be in his shoes. Now he realizes he has too much money and wants to give it back. I have zero problem with that. You don't like it, fine, nobody's forcing you to take his money.
I think this about him too. He's not stupid - he knows Windows isn't that good and that his wealth is largely undeserved. It's a recipe for guilt.
I'm glad he does the charity stuff though and hope he manages to give most of his money away.
One thing people don't really appreciate is that Gates' wealth is (to a certain extent) unavailable to him. If he pulled that much money out of MSFT the share price would tank and he would lose big-time.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Dad: "You can play your XBox 10 for another hour, then it's bedtime. Don't get assimilated by Microsoft Borg, boys. Ha Ha."
Son #1: Looks at his younger brother rolls his eyes. "Er, we won't Dad"
Dad leaves the room.
Son #2: What's dad talking about?
Son #1: I think he went to school with a guy named Gates who was always throwing chairs or something. Don't ask him about it - we'll get a long boring story.
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...
At which point Dick Cheney said "Go fuck yourself!",
and shot Ballmer in the face.
Ha! Didn't see that plot twist coming did you?
Man, this stuff writes itself.
Here's my try - large and small - need to tweak the small version's readability (perhaps a different chair) - but it's a start:
http://siliconpop.com/chair.jpg
http://siliconpop.com/chair.gif
God I love it when people twist the Ugly Reality of Bill Gates into the Beautiful Legend of Bill Gates. Yeah, he built one of the most successful companies ever, using dirty tricks, outright theft, and funding backhanded lawsuits against competitors.
Meanwhile, the Open Source community, usually reviled by people like you as the "communist bad guys" have built an entire software stack that is available to the world free of charge. If you had to put a dollar sign behind the distribution of code used worldwide, it would amount to BILLIONS of dollars worth of software available to anyone the world over for free of charge. How many hundreds of thousands of people, their families and their communities, are now employed in places like South America, China, Africa, etc thanks to the generous spirit of the Open Source community? How many MORE people will have the opportunity to learn new modern technologies thanks to the availability of open source software? THe B&MG foundation is a great way to redistribute wealth that was accumulated by questionable means, but the open source movement is a far more effective way to build and maintain the health of impoverished areas that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford the costs that do nothing but line the pockets of organizations like the B&MG foundation.
As they say, you can feed a man with a fish for a day, or you can teach him to fish and feed him for life.
We can expect him to be released around October 2012. Fantastic.
He only won in reality. Whereas we won in irony.
What part(s) of my resume should I brush up when applying for the job of "master villian and arch-nemisis of WonderTorvalds?"
:P
Spelling, probably
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I resent that. Why is it that every time a woman convinces a man to do something (against which he might not even have had strong feelings) she's controlling him? You know, it's entirely possible that Bill wasn't too averse to the idea of donating some of his money to charity, and his wife might have just given him that nudge.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Those of you calling Gates "evil", "villainous", etc, in order to belittle his philanthropic activities, consider this: ;-)
The companies that Gates "crushed" were rich companies whose execs had become rich themselves.
So Gates took from those rich fat cats (through unethical means, according to the Gates haters), and is now giving to the poor. That makes him a high-tech Robin Hood. And just like the government tried to bring down Robin Hood, they tried to bring down Gates. What say you to that?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
This is the beauty of capitalism. No matter how rich and powerful you are, you still get fired when you screw up.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If I had the kind of money these guys carry around, that's EXACTLY where I'd be plugging it.
Even for my smaller money, that is the one and only place I'd think of donating putting it.
There's nothing even remotely on the scale of the amount of good to humanity in general, to EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US, that comes close dealing aging a blow. The amount of subsequent evils this would postpone, reduce or even, at some point, completely obliterate, from cancer to heart disease to any other form of our bodies growing frail, falling apart, and eventually killing 100,000 of us *each day*, is by many orders of magnitude bigger than feeding any number of kids in Africa. In the long term, even to the kids in Africa themselves.
Every dollar in places such as the multi-million M-Prize competition encourages 10-20$ in research, if past competitions such as the X-Prize are to serve as an indicator.
Every dollar spent on targeted research (as opposed to research for the sake of research, only stumbling on useful anti-aging applications by chance) towards fixing things we *know* deteriorate in our bodies and that ideas (that require research) on how to fixing them are on the table, is nothing short of helping humanity as a whole. In the most literal sense of the word. Every dollar there increases our (read: your and my) chances of benefiting from them and living *significantly* longer (read: more than the 5-8 years on average that the linear graph anticipates for us at this stage. 15 Would be great. 25 Would be wonderful. And if those 25 get us to the point when better treatments are available that can keep us vigorous another 15 years, you won't see me objecting to that either).
Your sarcasm as put forth by the quotes is misplaced.
Real Anti-Aging research (as opposed to the cosmetic/snake-oil industry that shares the same name) that targets aging on the cellular level, is the by-far single most important charity one can donate to.
-
This is a sad day for me. My salute to a great mind: *salute*.
Man when I read this I had images of Bruce Wayne and Wayne corp.
He just needs more time for his superhero alter ego.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You could always use Slashdot AND digg.
Somewhat surprisingly, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
C-x C-s C-x k
I think Gates is doing something no-one else can do. He's redistributing wealth from the first world to the third world and doing what he can to make the world better.
To get his massive wealth he's done things that were dishonest and even illegal (Microsoft never could overturn the illegal monopoly decision).
But - and this is the crux - if he didn't have that wealth he couldn't do the things he can now. The wealth would be distributed throughout many people in North America, where it'd be likely to stay.
Sometimes the ends *do* justify the means.
I find it bizarre to praise Gates - as a computer enthusiast for 25 years now (I'm 35) I've come to see him as a net negative in the industry. We've got a monolithic company, a software monoculture, a history of massive security holes and illegal product tying. I believe the industry has suffered greatly because of Microsoft.
But I still see his charity outweighs any negatives.
MS stock has languished since 1998
Gates has been asleed at the wheel
There have been no new products
Everything is slipping even by MS's squishy standards
No one believes what they say anymore when they talk about their priorities
It's all well and good for Gates to give away his money but I am damned sick of him giving away MINE.