in reply to Re: Altruism @ Microsoft
in thread Top goal for 2003
Yes, Bill and Melinda Gate's foundation has given 5.5 Billion dollars to what you call 'Charity'. However I'd like to point out that for someone with a wage of 50K you can guess that their net worth might be about 300K (just a guess) compared to Gates net worth being about 450B. Extrapolating percentages this means that Gates has donated 1.2% of his net-worth. For our 300K person, 1.2% means donating 3.7K to charity.
Now, lets compare that to a 'couple thousand lines of code'.
To write this code, to debug it and to maintain it would take 30mins per line. (This is a guess based on my own experience of planning, writing, error-checking, maintaining and documenting). If we take 'couple thousand' to be 2000, then we're talking about 1000 hours. At 1000 hours, you'd be being paid $3.70 PER HOUR to be as 'altruistic' as Mr and Mrs Gates.
Next, can I point out that the Gates' gave 1.6 billion to 'Education'. Education donations are (annecdotally) in the way of Windows PCs to schools. These computers come with a one year licence to use MS software. At the end of that time, the schools have to either uninstall all the software or pay out huge amount for the licence renewals.
While I do not consider myself better than anyone, I do not think your arguments hold water. I will criticize MS for whatever I want and will especially criticize Mr Gate's supposed donations to 'Charity'. As Mr Gates does not know me, I cannot talk to him personally about my concerns about his money-grabbing practices. Instead what I can do is talk in such forums as these. I can make people aware of the differences between MS and OS ideologies. Maybe many of the serfs are as altruistic as OS contributors and may write OS in their own time (which their contracts with MS will say belongs to MS).
I am having a nice day. You do so to, Mr/Ms Anonymous.