The plight of poor women and children, I believe, is found around the world and not just in developing countries. It is important for us to remember that one may not need to look far, right down the street perhaps, in order to see the grotesque problems this inequality creates and exacerbates.

From my perspective, this has been a banner week for engaging topics.

The history of Microsoft's business praticises is sordid indeed, although Microsoft is quite different, and far better, in this respect than it was in the mid 90's. Microsoft's excesses reflected the personality of Gates himself - arrogant, and fiercely competitive. But Gates, and Microsoft, have both mellowed into a more mature middle age.

Gates, and Microsoft, have often been accused of failing to innovate. Microsoft's success was often attributed, by critics, to luck and anti-competitive business practices. To a significant extent, this narrative is true. But it ignores an even more important element of Gates and Microsoft's success. Microsoft was not a company that innovated in the sense of creating new categories of technology. It was a company that successfully innovated in the sense of technological relevance - it made new technologies (the PC, graphical user interfaces, office automation software, etc) relevant to a much larger audience. Gates' brilliance consisted primarly of his ability to forsee the pratical impact of new techologies on a large developer and customer base, and in his ability to construct an incremental, stepwise path to move those developers and customers toward that vision.

The Gates foundation builds on these strengths. None of the major issues addressed by the Gates foundation - third world health, education, etc - are new. But Gates' focus on practical solutions can make an impact even beyond his ability to fund large scale projects. I wish him great success, because of the hopes I hold for my children, my country, and my planet.

there was a revealing article in wired.com a few weeks back contrasting Gates, Jobs, and their respective public images. What was most interesting was the contrast between how each of the two men are viewed and their actions.

It's all wonderful for Gates to give away his money but I am damned sick of him giving away mine. MS stock hasn't moved since 1998. They haven't rolled out anything interesting or new, their next turn of the operating systems crank is late, boring and expensive and probably doesn't work right and everything they come across they pooh-pooh as stupid, like online apps, Google and open document. And let's face facts - they couldn't even do a reasonably good rollout of the Xbox360 nor does it have any familiarity with UI millions of its customers already understand. As soon as Gates started curing malaria in Africa and appointed his other school days billionaire buddy, Balmer to the top slot we all knew it was going to suck but not for 6 or 8 long years. In the meantime they've been barraged in lawsuits from whole continents and still they sit there and insist on everything their own damn way? What way? The not make money way? The run off and pretend to be Angelia Jolie way? So yeah - get rid of Bill. Get rid of Balmer too. And the people who report to him as well. Ray Ozzie is genius but let's hope the Microsoft ActiveDullness (tm) hasn't rubbed off on him.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.

How can the plight of poor women and children in the developing world be the failure of capitalism when the developing world does not practice capitalism?

most of us give more of our income than he does. and what would he do with it anyway?

he made his wealth viciously, and now he's buying his reputation back with the blood money.

you all are the same fools who will lionize the drug dealer who builds a big church with his booty

pathetic... and please note, so far there are no cures out of his philanthropy

we would have been better without the distorted market of his monopoloy, and allowing each to give his money where he wanted, rather than it all going to billg, who can then be a big man by giving it to whom he pleases, with his name attached.

anybody else get it, or you are all pod people already?

As somebody who actually, at one time, worked for a company writing open source software to run on Linux, I am more aware than most of how hard Microsoft has fought to retain its profitable monopolies. I think the world would have been a better place if Microsoft had have been split up, or forced to release Windows and Office under an open source licence. Not doing so has let Microsoft and its shareholders gouge another decade, or perhaps two, of monopoly profits out of those products before immensely cheaper open source alternatives kill them off.

However, it is hard to imagine a realistic alternative scenario which didn't involve somebody gaining a monopoly position in these markets, and Microsoft has been no more rapacious, and no more brutal, than any other company would have been in the same situation. Apple, for some reason the darling of a considerable number of left-leaning liberal arts types, is frankly far more domineering towards competitors in the market segments it does control. Larry Ellison at Oracle is equally bad. And so on. And compared to the robber barons of old, Microsoft are positively civilised. They have generally treated their staff well. They spend a lot of money on basic research, despite the classic large-company inability to actually make any money from it. The customers who they have overcharged have largely ranged from the well-off to the extremely well-off, many of whom could and should have known better (but if other members of the Fortune 500 want to pay Microsoft more than it would cost to develop their own software, who are we to stop them?).

And now its cofounder and primary shareholder wants to gradually, over the course of the rest of his life, give the overwhelming majority of his ill-gotten gains to genuinely worthy causes. And Mr. Leonard is quite right; Gates's foundation has chosen some of the more important causes in the world, and by most reports is spending quite cleverly in ways that might just actually help.

In any case, I compare the behaviour of Gates to Australia's wealthiest family (if you exclude the now American-based Murdoch clan), the Packers. Kerry Packer has made roughly $5 billion US dollars sitting on a government-granted free-to-air television licence - in Australia, no new entrants are allowed to set up new television stations, despite the technical capacity for new stations to be set up. He made one billion of those selling it to a character called Alan Bond, another Australian businessman who, despite his business collapsing round him, still somehow mysteriously manages to live the life of luxury in retirement, and buying it back again at fire sale prices from the corporate husk that was Bond's company. Lobbying by these networks delayed the introduction of color television, and cable TV, for decades after the US and other countries got it. Packer used his wealth to invest in such socially valuable businesses as the casino business. For kicks, he used his money to play polo, gamble huge amounts of money, and avoid paying tax through various complicated tactics. Despite occasional pieces of ad hoc charity, the overwhelming majority of Packer's fortune was duly handed over to his son James, whose main claim to fame in the business world was losing several hundred million dollars of the family fortune in cooperation with Lachlan Murdoch in a failed telco. Oh, and he left his mistress about ten million dollars worth of property.

Does America's richest man look so bad by comparison?