Bill Gates is retiring

Bill Gates is trying to retire from Microsoft but simply can't afford to live; open-source advocates have set up donation Web sites here and here. Yeah, just kidding.

It's easy to focus on all the bad things that Microsoft has done under Bill Gates' control: Some sneaky deals at the beginning of DOS, abuses of its monopoly, a lack of innovation in recent years, ungodly delays in software releases (remember Windows NT 5.0? Yeah.), and certainly Microsoft's opposition to open standards that makes today's Excel file tomorrow's Lotus 1-2-3 or VisiCalc file that you won't be able to open.

All of that said, Microsoft under Gates has brought intuitive, powerful computers to desktops around the world. The world has changed a great deal in the last few decades, and much of it has been because of Microsoft.

Gates is retiring to spend more money with his charity work. With his huge fortune and focus on philanthropy, Gates is on a parallel to Andrew Carnegie. Gates has rightly brought a focus to problems long neglected by the rich nations, like malaria. This is, undoubtedly, a great kind of innovation.