
Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Hits Out at Gates  - nhebb
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576232051635476200.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLETopStories
======
codingthewheel
Difficult to see how publicizing this stuff could be beneficial for Mr. Allen.
At that level, and sitting on top of a multi-billion dollar fortune, it almost
never behooves you to say anything negative about anybody -- least of all one
of your former partners. I also think complaining about not getting a bigger
share of MS stock, when you've got 14 billion in the bank...not exactly the
stuff of which Jedi are made.

~~~
sunchild
He isn't doing it to benefit himself. He probably doesn't care whether you
like him or not, and he definitely doesn't need your money or respect.

I guess Paul just wants the world to know that the image of Gates as our
benevolent patron of philanthropy is itself revisionism, lest anyone forget
that Bill Gates was one of the least loyal and trustworthy friends a person
could ask for.

It doesn't surprise me that HN sides with the victor in cases like this, but I
would argue that any serious business person should watch and learn carefully
from the lessons of two close friends who changed the world and ended up
disliking each other.

~~~
dgallagher
Bill Gates of 30 Years Ago != Bill Gates of Today

You of 10 Years Ago != You of Today

People change with time, and are not necessarily the same as they were in the
past. Forming a collective of ones entire life and cherry-picking various
moments simply gives you highlights, both good and bad. They don't speak to
what the person is right now.

Probably your best bet to gage someone is to look at what they've been doing
recently, going back maybe no more than ~5 years. Here you'll see someone
whose learned from their past mistakes, likely acting differently due to life
lessons, and are essentially the most authentic "version" of a person they
currently are.

~~~
macrael
You are absolutely right, but just because he has changed and the world has
forgiven him doesn't mean we should forget his past self. There are still
lessons to be learned. And, his philanthropy doesn't justify his past bad
behavior.

------
c2
I feel like I've worked with people like Paul Allen (programmers). They tend
to over value their own contributions and have "revisionist histories" when
considering their relationship with their manager, but really it comes down to
how much recognition they received.

The quote about Paul wanting significantly more shares for his contributions
to SoftCard specifically ring true. SoftCard might have been a sales success,
but comparing it's impact on Microsoft to Basic itself is a little _off_.

~~~
hvs
It's hardly fair to look back with 30 years of hindsight and say that BASIC
was more important to a company than SoftCard. Obviously, we know that _now_ ,
but that doesn't speak to their specific situation.

~~~
rbanffy
IIRC, Paul Allen wrote most of Microsoft's original BASIC interpreter... And
the emulator they used to develop it.

~~~
c2
According to Wikipedia, you recall wrong. Gates wrote the interpreter and
Allen wrote the emulator:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#History>

~~~
gwern
The _Vanity Fair_ excerpts have Allen writing the emulator, all the other
development tools, the loader, and then he wrote 25% of the interpreter
itself: [http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/05/paul-
all...](http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/05/paul-
allen-201105?currentPage=3)

------
kloncks
Is it just me or was Bill's reaction so cordial and professional? I loved it;
thought it was great.

 _"While my recollection of many of these events may differ from Paul's, I
value his friendship and the important contributions he made to the world of
technology and at Microsoft," Mr. Gates said in a written statement._

~~~
yannickt
It is exactly the kind of response I would expect from someone in his
position. He has nothing to gain by reacting overly negatively, and his legacy
is not exactly at stake.

------
meterplech
It seems to me the biggest allegation here is that Bill Gates and Steve
Ballmer tried to dilute his shares when he was diagnosed with cancer the first
time.

I hate to seem callous here, but, that might've completely made sense. God
forbid if Allen had died, the company, still pre-IPO startup whose main
product was MS-DOS (pre Office or any version of Windows) would want its
shares controlled by people with business interests in the company. When you
are a startup you want to align incentives properly and yes, people who are
unfortunately unable to contribute, even if it's through no fault of their own
probably shouldn't have huge amounts of stock.

Besides that allegation I don't really know what else here is that negative on
Bill Gates.

edit: MS-DOS not MS-DOC. Mistyped

~~~
rbanffy
There would be nicer ways to shield the company from that. They could talk to
Allen, make sure that, in the possible event of his death, they would take
care of his family in case the company succeeded.

In all my commercial ventures, my partners were also my friends. I would
never, ever even entertain doing something like this to a perfectly healthy
partner, much less one with a serious health problem.

~~~
kenjackson
Targeted dilution of individual shareholders seems extremely shady. Almost
seems like it should be illegal.

As noted by someone else, they should have simply retained first option to buy
any portio of Allen's shares in the case where his shares would change hands.
Actually that should probably apply to all major insiders.

Intentionally trying to dilute his shares, if this did indeed happen, is
tantamount to stealing in my eyes.

------
winestock
Cringley's account of Paul Allen's fight against Hodgkin's disease while at
Microsoft may be relevant.

[http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060330_0008...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060330_000890.html)

~~~
smackay
Cringley's account is very critical of Gates and Balmer, particularly on the
subject of getting control of Paul Allen's shares in Microsoft should the
worst happen. While this seems very cold-blooded it was probably a reasonable
course of action given the circumstances - look what happened to CraigsList
when one of the founders sold out to eBay.

~~~
yannickt
My interpretation of the article is that Allen felt betrayed because Gates and
Ballmer were having these discussions _behind his back_.

~~~
dantheman
Exactly, everything should be done above board -- when an unexpected event
happens and the outcome is unknown it doesn't hurt to have a contingency plan
if stuff doesn't work out.

------
yannickt
Cringely wrote a piece in 2006 about Allen progressively distancing himself
from Gates, Ballmer and Microsoft. It certainly raises questions about Gates'
character.

[http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060330_0008...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060330_000890.html)

Edit: Beaten to the punch by about 2 hours. Oops.

------
nickpinkston
All Ye founders take note and prepare thy operating agreements - for the
waters of startups are red with the blood of ye fellow founders!

------
dko
Set agreements in stone as early possible. No matter how much trust there is,
and no matter how awkward it may seem.

And I can't help but draw parallels with The Social Network, which
incidentally is also an account by an 'ousted' co-founder.

------
michael_dorfman
See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386411> for the Vanity Fair article
by Allen.

------
tmsh
The article makes it out as if Paul Allen is some sort of unlucky, dabbling
entrepreneur post-Microsoft:

 _Many of his business investments, like the cable company Charter
Communications, software company Asymetrix Corp. and set-top box maker Digeo
Inc., have either flopped or fared poorly for him._

I don't think so:

<http://www.vulcan.com/>

------
wmboy
Admit it, you're more likely to read the book now than you would have been...

He obviously wants his book to be successful (though not for monetary reasons)
so it would make senese to write about something controversial - in this case
putting Bill Gates in negative light is obviously the easist way to get
attention.

------
eyeforgotmyname
I always thought that Gates was the key business guy and Allen the key
technology guy, Gates made the money and Allen made the product. Once the
product was out Allen was no longer required, the ball was in Gates court and
he sold the shit out of it. Am I wrong in this view?

~~~
yannickt
Cringely's article, as well as Allen's accomplishments outside of Microsoft
make that questionable. Gates may have had more business savvy, but it seems
pretty evident that Allen was in no shortage of it either. To put it another
way, I don't think Allen was to Gates what Wozniak was to Jobs.

~~~
eyeforgotmyname
So then what was Gates contribution? I thought he was a brilliant businessman
but that he wasn't really a tech guy. Is that wrong?

~~~
whyenot
Gates was/is very much a tech guy. Here is a quote from his Wikipedia article

 _At 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school.
When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds
from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy an ASR-33 teletype terminal and a
block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's
students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and
was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first
computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that
allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the
machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he
reflected back on that moment, he said, "There was just something neat about
the machine." After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other
students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these
systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which
banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent
Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating
system to obtain free computer time._

------
elvirs
okay, may be Paul could have made a couple of billions more. but lets keep in
mind that all that fortune was made for him after Paul left the company. Now
he writes the this book trashing his old friend and partner who actually made
him rich? To me it looks like this is more of an ego issue for Paul rather
than letting the world know truth about Bill.

------
stretchwithme
"I'm not sure Bill would ever have dropped out of Harvard if it wasn't for
Paul," Mr. Yoffie said, referring to Mr. Allen's role in encouraging Mr. Gates
to leave college to start Microsoft. "I don't know whether Steve Jobs, without
Wozniak, would have ever gotten things together."

baloney.

~~~
burgerbrain
Without Woz, Jobs would have never even had a product to begin with. Forget
having a company, there would have been no reason to _form_ a company.

~~~
stretchwithme
Many companies built personal computers. Only one built the Mac. Jobs would
have found someone else. Being able to make things is not as common a skill as
knowing how to make things great.

~~~
rtaycher
My impression was that Woz developed apple 1(which gave apple some funds) by
himself(with jobs only encouraging/pushing) and developed a very large of the
apple II(which made apple a multi million dollar company) and then not much
else. which was one of the first personal computers and was
transformational(helping introduce personal computers into the world including
a wide variety of clones. Jobs was the team head who designed the first
mac(which was transformational in its own way-one of the first gui ) personal
computers). At least according to foklore.org a decent number of the brilliant
people working for apple on the mac and other projects were there in a
significant part because they fell in love with woz's work.

