The Two Faces of Bill Gates

Michael J. Jordan, Linux Online Staff

February 1, 2006

In the public consciousness, Bill Gates has, for the past few years, been playing two roles. One is the role that he's been best-known for for over 25 years - that of the face of the Microsoft Corporation. But in the past few years, since the creation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000, Gates has also become known as a philanthropist. The work of the foundation in helping to eradicate diseases like AIDS, polio and yellow fever earned Gates the title of Time Magazine's person of the year for 2005, along with his wife and U2's frontman Bono. Apparently not one to rest on his laurels, the Microsoft chairman announced last week at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the foundation was pledging almost a billion dollars to fight tuberculosis. It's estimated that this latest Gates Foundation initiative will save over 14 million lives, primarily in developing nations.

Though few would dispute the fact that Bill Gates' role as a philanthropist has done a lot to save lives in developing countries, in his role as Chairman of the Microsoft Corporation, according to the New York Times, he is doing little to enrich these same people's lives.

There is a project that aims at making millions of low-cost laptop computers running Linux available to citizens of countries like Nigeria. these computers may have trouble reaching their intended owners if Microsoft has any say in it.

This past Monday, John Markoff wrote a story in the Times which said in effect that the main obstacle to the success of MIT's Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop project is Microsoft. This was to be expected, as Negroponte, citing technical concerns, refused an offer on the part of Microsoft to include a version Windows on the laptop. Putting Linux on the machines is the best way to proceed, according to Negroponte. He'd rather rely on the technical known-how of thousands of open source developers than the changing priorities in Redmond, Washington.

Microsoft doesn't like rejection. A reportedly "bitter" Bill Gates went to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to offer an alternative - a cell phone running Windows. Microsoft thus has begun to pull their long and powerful strings. Negroponte remains committed, however. He has found a maker for the laptops, Quanta of Taiwan. He also has tentative commitments from several governments to purchase millions of the machines. The laptop, specially suited to the conditions of their future users - it can supply its own power by means of a hand crank - has also just received the backing of the United Nations.

Bill Gates needs to realize that though curing disease is a necessary and of course, laudable endeavor, the poor of this world also need access to technology once their diseases are cured. Only with access to technology, will they be able to break out of the cycle of poverty that causes disease in the first place. If a laptop running Linux is the best way to "bridge the digital divide", as the saying goes, then he should not let his role as Chairman of the Microsoft Corporation get in the way.

Michael J. Jordan is the webmaster of Linux Online and can be reached at Michael.Jordan**AT**Linux.org