Today's news about Bill Gates supposed retirement leaves me with mixed feelings. It is indeed the passing of an era at Microsoft and the company has changed dramatically. I, as most of you know, have some personal feelings about Bill Gates and his business practices which date back to when we were trying to build Microworkz into a PC company for the masses. After the front page story about us appeared on 2/1999 I got this email from Mr. Gates:
From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 1999 11:30 AM
To: Rick LatmanSubject: Microsoft and Microworkz
Rick,
As you are aware, Microsoft maintains specific licensing requirements for computer vendors that require you to comply with our terms and conditions in order to be an authorized pc builder wth msft tools. I will tell you now that we will not allow you to install Windows on Microworkz machines and destroy the profit margins of our business in the process. This is not a discussion, not a debate point and we will bury you in legal and punitive fees if you don't stop this immediately. We are free to set the price of our software at any price the market will bear, your price will be $230 per machine.
Now go sell your whiteboxes at $299.
Those of you who know me probably know how I responded (since you could buy it per piece on the street at about $90) and why this case became so "newsworthy" in Seattle and only in Seattle. He was an all-powerful man in that town and probably still is. Few of you probably know that he then turned around and used us as a DEFENSE against the government in the antitrust lawsuit. Here's some links for interesting reading:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ofnote/07-23joc.mspx
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,11574,00.asp
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/07/12/BU75493.DTL
I'll talk more later on this topic but it's nice to finally say "Goodbye" to Mr. Gates, I only hope he fights as hard for the charities as he did to enrich his pockets at the expense of the World.
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