Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#131

Post by WalterBright » Sun, Apr 24, 2016, 9:01 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #127

WalterBright wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many apps on my iphone that came bundled with it that I never use. I'm a bit surprised. Most people in the 90's that I knew who ran Linux either repurposed an old machine to it that would otherwise have been scrap, or assembled a machine from parts. In neither case did they buy a Windows license for it. I remember an Amazon employee telling me that it was hard to buy a Linux machine without Windows on it. I…

The issue was that people wanted to buy Windows machines and Microsoft's licenses said that, if a company wanted to sell any copies of Windows, then every machine they sold had to have a copy of Windows installed. There were very few pre-installed Linux vendors (and still are) prior to the Netscape lawsuit, when Microsoft purportedly dropped the requirement. I never really repurposed any old machines; I've always bee…

If vendors could make money selling Linux machines, they would have. Like I said, it wasn't hard to get into that business. Even a niche business can be very profitable if it is not served by the rest of the industry.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#132

Post by specialist » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 10:11 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #115

specialist wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presbyterian here. We were taught you can't buy your way into Heaven. Yes, donate to charity. But don't publicly congratulate yourself. I've worked to overcome my WASP reluctance to talk about money. As a geek, we should be comparing salaries. As an activist, to be effective you need resources, which is a nice proxy for buy-in, so you learn how to ask for money.

Yes, donate to charity. But don't publicly congratulate yourself. Yes, and this is the concept I take issue with. If Bill Gates's continued public dialogue over his charitable actions convinces other billionaires to join the cause, how is that anything other than a net positive? He may yet succeed in wiping out malaria when he might not have succeeded had he kept quiet. The goal of any charitable act should be to mak…

I believe we're in agreement. I only mention my upbringing to note that Protestants had their own reasons for keeping their charity private and just how hard it is change one's early indoctrination.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#133

Post by tyrael71 » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 9:01 AM UTC

mike2477 wrote: post #2

Hey there, data geeks! I am doing research on the rise of social entrepreneurship and got sidetracked by what a badass Bill Gates is. I found out that his foundation is 4x larger than the next largest private foundation in the US. And if you add up the wealth pledged as a part of The Giving Pledge it is 10x larger than that. I compiled The Giving Pledge data on my own by researching net worths of each pledgee. Planni…

Is there anywhere I could access/read the research, or is it just the information you have on that blog?