Bill Gates, a modern-day Robin Hood?

Being a hero-worshipper of Steve Jobs as i am, i am bound to be an antagonist of Bill Gates and his Mocrosoft outfit. Perhaps my hatred for Microsoft’s ways is not blind if you consider a number of dirty business tactics these guys are famous for: the Halloween Letters, forcing Internet Explorer on costumers and using apple’s protoypes to create Windows.

However nomatter how much a Microsoft-hater one might be, one cannot but look with awe at how Bill Gates and his Bill and Mellinda Gates Foundation have made “a dent in the universe” as his rival Jobs is famous of having said. Gates, the philanthropist, has really changed the lives of many people especially in africa through donating funds to help cure diseases such as AIDS, malaria etc.

These noble contributions have led me to see Bill Gates, the software pirater, in another positive light: a Robin Hood who steals from the rich(at least those who can afford Microsft’s licences) and giving to the poor. I say steal because most of Microsoft’s products are arguably shody and hardly work without crashing. As a web developer i am sure many others in my profession will vindicate me in that in that, for example, internet explorer, microsoft’s web browser is sure to cause you headaches when designing websites due to its disregard for web standards (with the exception of the new internet explorer 8).

So there you are, whether you like him or not Bill Gates is obvously playing a big part in wealth redistribution through selling microsoft’s products and giving away some of the money to the underprivileged communities.