Needing to Care

Computerworld - Now that the conflagration around the Bill Gates torch-passing announcement has subsided, it's easier to make a hype-free assessment of whether we need to care. My conclusion is that we do. But not for any of the reasons that have been bandied about amid all the fireworks.

Five or 10 years from now, when observers assess the impact of Gates' departure from involvement in Microsoft's day-to-day operations, the transition will likely be cited as a key factor in whatever will have transpired to change Microsoft's fortunes between now and then. The connection may be legitimate. But it hardly will make a difference in anything that really matters.

Love or loathe Microsoft, it would be difficult to argue that the company hasn't been a huge contributor to positive change in our quality of life in the 31 years since its inception. Yet at this stage in Microsoft's corporate life, the change agent is no longer an individual or even a group of individuals. The change agent is an amalgam of the company, its partners and its users. So it's not what Gates has shifted his attention from that we need to care about. It's what he has shifted his attention to.

Anyone who has read about the transition since it was announced on June 15 knows that Gates is making the move so he can devote more time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But there's been virtually no coverage of the significance of the foundation getting that boost. We've all been too busy looking at the significance of Microsoft having a founder who's less hands-on. That bespeaks a twisted perception of what's really at stake here.

Go to the foundation's Web site (www.gatesfoundation.org ) and you'll find this in the mission statement: "Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to reduce inequities and improve lives around the world."

Why is it that we see this endeavor as less worthy of our attention than the strategic direction of a software company? Maybe it's because we've been inoculated against caring by self-proclaimed philanthropists whose fortunes were made in the IT industry and whose motives appear questionable. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison comes to mind.

Last week, the Financial Times reported that Harvard University has been left high and dry by Ellison, who in March 2005 committed to donating $115 million to Harvard to establish the Ellison Institute for World Health. The Times reported that Ellison never paid up and that his advisers last fall began linking the payment to the final settlement of an insider trading lawsuit brought against Ellison by Oracle's shareholders. That settlement called for Ellison to donate $100 million to charity in Oracle's name.