Yes, Bill and Melinda Gate's foundation has given 5.5 Billion dollars to what you call 'Charity'. However I'd like to point out that for someone with a wage of 50K you can guess that their net worth might be about 300K (just a guess) compared to Gates net worth being about 450B. Extrapolating percentages this means that Gates has donated 1.2% of his net-worth. For our 300K person, 1.2% means donating 3.7K to charity.

Now, lets compare that to a 'couple thousand lines of code'.

To write this code, to debug it and to maintain it would take 30mins per line. (This is a guess based on my own experience of planning, writing, error-checking, maintaining and documenting). If we take 'couple thousand' to be 2000, then we're talking about 1000 hours. At 1000 hours, you'd be being paid $3.70 PER HOUR to be as 'altruistic' as Mr and Mrs Gates.

Next, can I point out that the Gates' gave 1.6 billion to 'Education'. Education donations are (annecdotally) in the way of Windows PCs to schools. These computers come with a one year licence to use MS software. At the end of that time, the schools have to either uninstall all the software or pay out huge amount for the licence renewals.

While I do not consider myself better than anyone, I do not think your arguments hold water. I will criticize MS for whatever I want and will especially criticize Mr Gate's supposed donations to 'Charity'. As Mr Gates does not know me, I cannot talk to him personally about my concerns about his money-grabbing practices. Instead what I can do is talk in such forums as these. I can make people aware of the differences between MS and OS ideologies. Maybe many of the serfs are as altruistic as OS contributors and may write OS in their own time (which their contracts with MS will say belongs to MS).

I am having a nice day. You do so to, Mr/Ms Anonymous.

I'm sorry you felt it best to remain an annonymous monk. If you want to argue something at least show your face.

Sigh. They never learn.

To write this code, to debug it and to maintain it would take 30mins per line.

Unless each line is a 150 character regex, this is a completely ridiculous estimate. Two lines an hour? You realize that's not even 50 lines/24hr day right? So you're saying a 100,000 line program would take you something like 6 years to complete, working 24hrs/day 7 days a week? That's flat out insane.

For our 300K person, 1.2% means donating 3.7K to charity.

No, for your 300k person, it means donating 5.5 Billion. Money is Money, period. If you don't have 5.5 Billion, well go make it. Striving for mediocrity and then saying you're more altruistic because you give away a higher percentage than a multi-billionaire, isn't very respectable (although it's still better than most).

Oh, and there's also the minor fact that code doesn't equal money. In the cases of very successful open source projects, they can benefit poorer countries, but they're not money, they're not food, they're not life-saving drugs. Don't forget this.

I am having a nice day. You do so to, Mr/Ms Anonymous.

Thank you. It's nice to see flamefests can still be civil :). I'm afraid I'll have to end this one though. Judging by the fundamental differences between fact(me) and opinion(everyone else ;) continuing it would take up far too much of my time. Feel free to keep the discussion going though, I'm sure somebody else will step in.

Have a nice day :)

While it's great that it helps the people, I don't think it's as altruistic as you think. My opinion is that it's PR. Hell, the foundation came about right as the anti-trust came into full swing. To me, that's spin and it's in their own best interest. Sure it's mostly tax deductable too.

The biggest thing about Gates that bothers me is that he is one of the few people on earth who could actually make a big difference and all he cares about is fiscal domination. Think about it, our goverment is unfortunately money driven. Well he has plenty of that. I don't think there's too much he wouldn't be able to accomplish.

Whatever, I would think at some point you would just think... I've got enough, time for other things.
This pretty much sums up my feelings.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

50 lines of code is a very reasonable estimate. anyone with any real experience who actually writes quality code (this obviously doesn't include you or microsoft) would know that although you can write 18000 lines of code in two weeks of coding, by the time you've debugged it, tested it reworked it a bit and documented it it has been another 6 weeks. That aint insane it's just fact buddy. in fact I found this thread because I was just calculating my total LOC and I am in general pretty productive at it. my average over 8 weeks was 45/hour.