[Roy Fokker]

One of the greatest industrialists of all times, certainly the greatest of modern times retired last Friday. William Henry Gates, after 33 years as the Chief Executive Officer, Software Architect and Chairman of the Board of the Microsoft Corporation called it quits. His retirement closes out the era in which the microprocessor-based computer went from a hobbyist curiosity to the ubiquitous device of the modern world. Distributed computing grew from an obscure niche in computer science to the communication fabric of the current digital millennium.

Bill Gates' vision took Microsoft Corporation from a group of young, wild-eyed, enthusiastic iconoclasts to being one of the most valuable corporations in the world. He did it without a dollar from the taxpayers, without the assistance of any government agency, asking only to be paid for his product. It is a classic story of creating wealth from nothingness through the power of vision, human creativity and hard work.

Gates' detractors were largely competitors that fell by the wayside as they could not keep up with his vision as he redefined the modern corporation in its abilities to respond to customer needs and input in a rapidly changing market and technological infrastructure. Xerox, Apple, IBM, Digital Equipment, and Sun all at one time or another had superior technologies, higher market valuations and larger capital pools than Microsoft. Yet by the dawn of the twenty-first century, after only 25 years they had all been left behind. Xerox was out of the computer business entirely, after having invented the graphical user interface, networking and the mouse pointer. Digital Equipment and the VAX architecture are dead and buried. Sun is on life support as it watches market share crumble away. IBM dramatically reinvented itself when it had one foot in the grave but now sells more services than hardware. Apple emulated Microsoft by remaking itself with its multimedia products, the iPod and iPhone.

When Sun and Netscape conspired successfully to get the justice department to consider Microsoft as a monopoly, there was a momentary hesitation by Gates as he was dragged in to a world that he had never considered relevant: the politics of envy in Washington. When this happened Microsoft did not even have an office in Washington, let alone any lobbyists. That was as foreign to Bill Gates mentality as alchemy.

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cheers,

[CHATSDALE]

we reap the harvest of his dream every day