Bill Gates steps down as the Chairman of Microsoft on July 1st to transition to full time philanthropic efforts with the Gates Foundation. However, I wonder how effective Bill will be other than writing checks. You see Bill's never played well with others.

Bill Gates' new company is accumulating patents and operating as a shell

"Hear what Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates had to say during his last official visit to the UK before he 'retires' later this year. IT PRO attended the special event hosted by the Institute of Directors (IoD) and, after Gates had done his thing there was a Q&A session with the billionaire and industry figurehead." And also note how some of his answers match up rather nicely with F/OSS.

AS MUCH as I like the Linux-powered Nokia N800 "Internet Tablet", I found that people not familiar with it feel the need to approach and talk about it. Bill Gates comes to the rescue with the perfect accessory.

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers.

If you are Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds, it is totally understandable to have an ego the size of the biggest planet. The two has been known to make comments that will forever keep the geek pride alive. If you want proof, just read the following quotes from Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds, and be the judge of who has a bigger ego between them.

I think if Bill Gates met a Debian system and installed a program from the repositories, he might just go to his engineers and say, "Why can't it be like this?"

At the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Bill Gates gave his thoughts on where the pharmaceutical industry was going, and where it should be going. However, he also slipped up a bit and criticized the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Microsoft is beset with competition from all sides, unlike any it has seen in decades, and Bill Gates, who co-founded the company 32 years ago, still intends to step away next year as planned. But so far, Mr. Gates, Microsoft’s 51-year-old chairman, shows no sign of fading away.