[JayNorth]

William H. Gates III is a left-wing socialist

Melinda French has had a bad (socialist) effect on him, but he and his family have always leaned left of center. To his credit he doesn't ram politics down your throat.

By the way, we're lucky as a society that a business-minded guy like Gates won out instead of Patterson or Kildall in the early days of DOS. I don't think a lot of what we take for granted would have been developed as quickly if there hadn't been a common standard. I was there and remember what the hobbyist computer arena was like back then...very fragmented and ego-driven, sometimes self-destructively so.

[Knitebane]

I was there too, and I remember what Bill Gates did to the community that gave him his start.

Bill Gates built an empire off of the backs of the members of the Homebrew Computer Club.

And Microsoft has never been about standards. IBM was about standards. Intel was about standards. Microsoft was about proprietary, closed protocols and formats that they spammed out until enough people used them that the rest had to comply just to be able to communicate with them.