Anonymous

Wiltshire UK

IT Consultant

I think Gates deserves this recognition - and probably more. I think that many of the most vehement critics of Gates and Microsoft are comparative newbies in the IT industry.

Those people who remember the IT industry before it was dominated by Microsoft would proably agree that - despite the questionable methods sometimes employed by MS - the overall effect has been mainly beneficial to IT end users. In the 1980s I was paid three days consulting (£500 per day even then) to move a couple of files from one computer to another - an operation that would now take a few milliseconds to do. It is mainly the influence of Microsoft that transformed those kind of operations (and much more besides). Their dominance of the industry brought down prices, faciliated interchange in a way that would never have happened otherwise and provided unified (albeit propietary) application sets that are universally available and accessible. The people who complain about that transformation either do not know how tough IT was to use before MS, or they yearn for the days when the select few - the IT priesthood if you will - could maintain the mystique around IT and name their prices for their products and services.

Clearly, not all the results of Microsoft's labours have been good - but I would contend that the good heavily outweighs the bad. Therefore I contend that Gates deserves his honorary K at least as much for opening up (some say democratising) IT to the world as for his charity work.

Alan T