Bill Gates
(1955 -
If you've been inhabiting a cave in the outer reaches of Nepal for the last decade or so, there is a slim chance you are not aware of William Gates III. Bespectacled, socks-and-sandals shod, sporting a characteristic drab cardigan, Gates emerged as the world's richest man in the mid 1990s thanks to the growing prevalence of personal computers.
Born in Seattle in 1955, Gates' childhood was, by all reports, typical of any well-to-do resident of the US. Son of a schoolteacher and an attorney with liberal leanings, like all good techies Gates became interested in computing at an early age. Unlike many techies however, he was also interested in business, and began early by cutting deals with his sister over "borrowing rights" for toys and sports equipment.
An interest in maths was quickly converted to an interest in programming and computing in high school, where he programmed a game of noughts and crosses.
In 1973, Gates embarked on an ill-fated degree at Harvard University, where came across the microcomputer and worked on developing the BASIC programming language. At the time the consensus seemed to be that microcomputers would be little more than a passing fad, an expensive toy for techies, and whether or not he believed such predictions, Gates saw the mini-systems as both a technical and business opportunity.
In 1975 Microsoft was launched with programmer pal Paul Allen, however the company's big win came in 1980, when it was contracted to provide an operating system for the brand new IBM microcomputers. First and foremost a businessman, Gates bought the QDOS (quick and dirty operating system) from Seattle Computer Products and morphed it into MS DOS - Microsoft Disk Operating System.
With the user-friendly Apple Macintosh GUI snapping at his heals, Microsoft released Windows in 1985, and began to set a now familiar pace of consecutive annual upgrades to keep in step with improvements in computing technology. However, the similarities between the Mac OS and Windows soon landed Gates in court. In response Gates drafted a licensing agreement which covered Apple features not only in Windows 1.0, but in all subsequent Microsoft operating systems.
When the subsequent Windows 2.0 operating system began to look even more like the Mac OS, Microsoft once again faced Apple in court, however by June 1993 the court ruled in Microsoft's favour. The judgement handed down stated that the 1985 agreement enabled Microsoft to use 161 of the 170 copyrights Apple claimed as their own.
Although spectacular, Microsoft's growth has been marred by similar disputes, leaving Gate's admirers championing his business acumen, and his detractors attacking his business ethics, or lack thereof.
The Microsoft operating systems' toehold established in the late eighties was further strengthened throughout the nineties, as Gates' personal fortune further polarised his supporters and detractors. Heavily promoted by Microsoft as a philanthropist, Gates has formed a series of aid programs aimed at alleviating poverty in Africa, amid claims he and his wife intend to spend their fortune on good works rather than leave it to their progeny.
I think it is east to guess that the median age of your voters was below 30, and that those who wrote the salutory articles were slightly lacking in experience or balance. The extremely heavy leaning towards Unix and Linux does make the listing a little biased.
I suggest you read "Fire in the Valley" (both editions: Freiberger and Swaine, 1984 and 2000) for a different viewpoint on Bill Gates than he provides in his semi-fictional hagiography. If you read between the lines it becomes apparent the Microsoft achieved its eminence by inventing only one thing: the first software anti-piracy crusade, when Gates objected to people stealing the BASIC he stole from his time working as a hacker at DEC.
I am sorry, but my age must be showing. I can't see how any Web-based artcile doesn't put Douglas C. Engelbart at the head of the PC revolution. It is the obvious place for the man who invented the VDU, windowing, the mouse, and hypertext.
I feel despair that in the same week that I read two articles by prominent authors decrying the fact that because the young and inexperienced see something published on the Internet, they consider it true, that this piece of distortion is published on, guess what, the Internet.