Paul Allen Rips Bill Gates In Autobiography

itwbennett writes "Bill Gates was guilty of 'mercenary opportunism' when he schemed with Steve Ballmer to dilute Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's equity in the company while Allen was recovering from Hodgkin's disease, according to Allen. In his upcoming autobiography, 'Idea Man,' which is excerpted in Vanity Fair, Allen paints a portrait of Gates as brilliant, focused, driven ... and ruthless. According to Allen, Gates in the early days twice sought larger equity in the company on the grounds that he 'did more.' Allen says he acquiesced each time, both because he understood his partner's reasoning and to avoid major conflict."

Comments

Does it surprise anyone...

[Frosty Piss]

...That Gates and Ballmer are scheming cut-throats?

Re:Does it surprise anyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Paul Allen has $13 billion. Please excuse me if I find it difficult to feel sorry for him.

Re:Does it surprise anyone...

[thsths]

The two good points are made, can we close the discussion now, before it gets ugly?

Re:Does it surprise anyone...

[hairyfeet]

Oh it wasn't just him, I remember a story about how Jobs fucked Woz out of something like $1500 by saying that the game that Woz wrote that Jobs sold to Atari had only netted $300 (and thus making Woz's half $150) when it actuality it had sold for something like $3000, and this was supposed to be his friend..

I bet if someone did a full psyche work up on most successful CEOs you'd find that damned near every single one is a sociopath because to reach that level of success and power one has to be willing to fuck EVERYBODY, friends, family, workers, everyone they come in contact with. So is it any surprise that Gates did what probably every other top CEO did and fucked his colleague? Sadly we reward sociopaths when it comes to business.

Doesn't make him any less of a douche, it just gives him a hell of a lot of company, Jobs, Ellison, I bet every major tech CEO that has reached the billionaires club has a hell of a lot of fucked over friends left in their wake.

Re:Does it surprise anyone...

[AVryhof]

.... or $1 a year.

That's how you sell an autobiography

[MrEricSir]

Saying nice things about people never sold anything. If he said nice things about Gates, would the book even be on Slashdot?

If you want your autobiographical book, newspaper, magazine, etc. to sell, you have to be at least a little mean.

Re:That's how you sell an autobiography

[Daengbo]

Gates was always ruthless, egotistical, and manipulative in his dealings with others -- possibly even sociopathic. His recent change is just Robber Baron Guilt playing itself out like it always does. No one wants to go down in history the way he was going to go. You've got to distract the public, donchaknow?

Re:That's how you sell an autobiography

[exomondo]

Not to mention at the bottom of the article:
According to Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Allen's portrayal of Gates "in the book is already making waves within the tight circle of early Microsoft alumni, with several people who know both men privately expressing confusion about Mr. Allen's motivations for criticizing his old business partner and questioning the accuracy of Mr. Allen's interpretation of certain events

Re:That's how you sell an autobiography

[Daengbo]

Sociopaths are really good at mimicking normal emotions. In this case, it looks like guilt, but it's really just as self-serving as ever.

But but he said his stuff was always cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates always claimed that his stuff was cheaper than everyone elses, and he barely made any money at all. Thats why he has made the Forbes greediest list for such a long time, his priest-like oath to poverty. I heard the story about how Allen would be pale, vomiting, and shivering over a console, while Gates tells Ballmer, that if he doesn't put in a full 60 hours a week, and get the project done on time, he forfeits 80% of his stock. Gates didn't contribute any code, not much for ideas, but he did have the company. Oh, and he had more greed than any of the others. Some also described him as a sonofabitch. But you never heard that from me.

Re:That's how you sell Slashdot.

[by (1706743)]

So when is Taco going to do an autobiography?

"I wanted to be the poll option, but CowboyNeal sought the position, and I acquiesced every time..."

Re:Oh poor Paul

[Daengbo]

He has been involved with philanthropy in the U.S. Pacific Northwest for 20 years, largely through his Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, handing out more than $1 billion in grants and funding for local projects.[1]

Last year he pledged his remaining wealth (USD13.5B) to charity.

Allen has been a philanthropist since Gates was at the height of his douchebaggery. You ... you're just an ass.

Re:Yep - He did it to Steve Jobs

[UnknowingFool]

My understanding of the history goes like this:

• Apple got permission from Xerox corporate for a private meeting with PARC engineers.
• Apple paid for two meetings and use of Xerox ideas with $1M of Apple stock.
• PARC engineers didn't like the idea but complied.
• Apple engineers were shown the Star and got to ask detailed questions about how it worked and concepts.
• Apple would take the ideas and later build the Mac on it.

  The Mac was not an exact copy of the Star. The Xerox Star system however was far from complete. It didn't have drag-and-drop, windows could not overlap, etc. Apple did use the idea of menus, using a mouse as a pointer, etc.

• Apple did not steal the source code from Xerox.

  Part of the deal worked out with Xerox was that Apple was shown Smalltalk. However, Xerox built the Star using another own language called Mesa. Even if Apple got the source code and an emulator, it would be useless as the Mac OS was written in assembly.