He cheated in plain sight, for one. Stuck a Ford label on a Chevy and claimed to have something unique and new. Continued to ‘borrow’ liberally from actual innovators and dared them to stop him - sadly, they didn’t.
We can debate his intellect but his morals are the usual noblesse oblige.
I think it’s hilarious that about 10 years before Bill Clinton was getting rather a lot of attention for having it off with a subordinate on the East Coast, Bill Gates was getting very little attention for having it off with a subordinate on the West Coast despite the early days of ‘woke’ regarding sexual encounters in the workplace. But Melinda Gates heard the cash register ringing so she went with it.
Above all, Gates is tacky. It may have been inevitable that he would be asked to join Augusta National Golf Club but he openly asked for an invitation - a serious error that delayed the real invitation by many years because they like to keep things quiet and on their own schedule.
Like its sister/parent UN, the WHO is the happy face of the usual swarthy, sweaty corruptocrats who will say and do anything for a buck - something Gates has plenty of. The UN/WHO still enjoy positive press although Lord knows why since their record of achievement is either zero or less than zero. Gates enjoys seeing ‘official’ approval of his crackpot ideas and knows that he will take a PR beating because he is a cultural icon so he hands off to the fuzzy third worlders with their eyechart names.
None of those “innovators” Gates borrowed from were going to do anything with their inventions until Gates et al put the inventions together in a way that would create products that would sell. That was the genius of Gates. Do you want to say he cheated these innovators? Fair enough, but it wasn’t Apple, IBM or Amiga that took the markets by storm, it was Windows based PC’s tied with Intel CPU’s.