So Bill Gates came down to do some sort of a keynotes lecture at the University of Texas at Austin (my school), and since it was free, I decided to go down and see him talk. I think over all his presentation was alright as it kinda focused on nebulous trends that he is observing in the tech world and then later he focused heavily on philanthropy and the Gates foundation. While I have no strong feelings for or against Gates (despite my love for Linux and strong distaste for Windows), I must say that some of the stuff that he is doing in terms of philanthropy garnered some respect from me.

However, during the Q&A period at the end, someone asked a question about the role of open source (I forget the wording), and of course, in the spirit of Microsoft he really seemed to try and minimize the role of open source in the software world as much as possible. He said that he liked "free software" and drew a distinction between "free software" (a la BSD license) and software that is licensed under the GPL. I thought it was funny how he was saying that the GPL was bad because it wouldn't allow for the creation of companies and jobs based on software under that license, and I wanted to stand up and say that it wasn't true. I mean, companies like Red Hat and Mozilla are successful companies that make their money with GPL'd software. However, I didn't respond to that statement because it'd would have been rude to take up someone else's question time (people were lined up at the mics to ask questions).

I think really what this experience has taught me is that all the fame and money in the world don't really make a difference overall in how I perceive others. I mean, I was standing in the same room as the world's wealthiest man, and I really don't feel any more special for listening to him talk. Although I have gained a little bit of respect for him in terms of his philanthropic efforts, I still disagree with him and his company about software, just like I disagree with other people about things like music or tv shows. I don't think that I'll ever be star-struck if I ever see another famous person again (unlike some of the fan-boys in the audience at the keynote today), and I don't think I'll ever understand why people do become star-struck. Maybe its better for me that way.

-Zorak

P.S. Sorry for the really long post, but I figure a "once in a lifetime experience" deserves more than 3 sentences to reflect on.

Interesting. Much as I dislike the man I would have gone myself given the chance. I think the BSD licence issue can be summed up as the MS TCP/IP stack. Gates started out by stealing other peoples creations and continues to do the same.

Your experience reminds me of my staff induction day at SCO (Yes I worked for the enemy at one time!) where I had the audacity to ask one of the board (Geoff Seabrook) if he was concerned about the advances of open source and in particular Linux as it was a strong competitor to OpenServer and UnixWare. His answer was that no serious organisation would base its infrastructure on 'shareware'. I was stone cold and told him I thought he was wrong.... I only lasted another 12 months before leaving for a better job. Two months after that they were bought by Caldera.

There is no doubt that Gates does some good work with the foundation. As the worlds richest man it is kind of inevitable that he would be the biggest giver. What the hell else is the man going to do with that money?

It was Caldera and Darl McBride that were the real ugly ones, not the pre-Caldera SCO. The original Santa Cruz Operations guys had actually looked at the possibility of Linux infringing on their patents and found zilch, according to Groklaw and others.

We had our moments but I'd concur. SCO was an interesting place to be although I was in the PC to Unix conectivity side and not the OS division. The bit I was in went on to be Tarantella.