Should Bill Kill Windows?

Bill Gates, philanthropist. Cough, splutter. Doesn’t sit easy, does it? But if you dig back into his past you’ll find it’s not out of character. When IBM was looking for an operating system, Bill did point them in Digital Research’s direction. When DR turned IBM down is when Bill then decided to do it himself. In hindsight, seeing how much money he’s made, that generous gesture almost proved extra-ordinarily costly.

Now Bill is back on the generosity bandwagon, planning to step out of Microsoft in a couple of years time to devote all his time to his philanthropic work.

Preston Gralla from O’Reilly Net, makes the insightful and interesting observation that Bill Gates will in the future be known and remembered for his philanthropic work rather than Microsoft or Windows.

But should Bill be remembered that way? Is it okay to spend the better part of your working life building monolithic money hungry corporations that pursue financial gains at the cost of human spirit, and then late in the game, switch sides and become a philanthropist, using your ill-gotten gains to help the poor and needy in the world?

Because the problem is… those who do, leave behind the mechanisms that are making the divide between rich and poor grow deeper and wider.

To paraphrase an old saying:
Give a man a fish, and feed him for a day;
Teach him how to fish, and he can get a job working for pittance for a multi-national fish harvesting company.

I’m not against any rich person becoming a philanthropist, but wouldn’t it be better for Bill to spend a fair wad of his money campaigning against the wrongs being perpetrated by mega-corporations on people? For example, who’s bank keeps increasing fees and cutting staff despite record profits?

But enough of the philosophizing, lets get down to tin-tacks and talk computers.

Kill Windows
Although I’m not against the obscenely rich giving away their money, what concerns me is that they leave behind the monsters they created to get wealthy in the first place. In Bill’s case, one of those monsters is something called Windows.

When Bill Gates steps away from Microsoft in 2008, he will leave behind a PC world in a mess, struggling under the weight of a patchwork OS that carries legacy support from back when he was still only a millionaire.

Dictionary.com defines philanthropy as: The effort or inclination to increase the well-being of humankind, as by charitable aid or donations.

If Bill really wants to “increase the well being of humankind” he should kill Windows. Wouldn’t the world be better served by Bill accepting that Windows is a disaster and using his money to put us out of its misery? If he did kill Windows, there are a couple of options open to him.

Option 1: Support OS X and/or Linux
The first option is pulling Microsoft out of the OS business altogether and promoting OS X and/or Linux to fill the void. There are pros and cons for each, but obviously as a Mac user, I’d be preferable to Microsoft backing OS X. (From a philosophical point of view, I might have to say Linux.)

In the early 80’s, Bill believed that Macs were the way of the future. It’s time he revisited that opinion. If he really wants to make a difference he needs to work with Apple to bring the best computing platform to the masses. With virtualization in Leopard and Intel in Macs, the transition could go quite smoothly.

Option 2: A new Microsoft OS
The second option if Bill’s reluctant to get Microsoft out of the OS business, it’s time he bit the bullet and introduced a new OS entirely, and preferably one with Unix under pinnings. Apple did it with OS X. Microsoft could do it. Microsoft needs a totally new OS just as Apple did. With Virtual PC, Microsoft has no reason for not building a new OS, as any legacy Windows programs could be run in it. That is afterall why it acquired Virtual PC.

We do know Microsoft is beavering away on an OS called Singularity, but there’s no real indication yet whether it is intended to be Windows successor, it is still simply called a “research project”.

What do you think?
What do you think? Should Bill EOL (end of life) Windows? And if he does, should he back the Mac, the Penguin or a new Microsoft operating system?

Information used in compiling this article was sourced from the following websites:
Wikipedia on Bill Gates
VoteView on Bill Gates
Preston Gralla of O’Reilly Net on Bill Gates’ legacy
dictionary.com on philanthropy
Apple Matters on Singularity
Parts of this article appeared on my own blog, QwertyRash on Bill Gates’ legacy