Gates at Zellerbach

Ping is a little harsh on himself about yesterday's event with Bill Gates. A few of us (Ping, myself, Arthur, Morgan, Yuri and few other students that I don't know very well) flyered the event (here is the front and back of the flyer).

Arthur has a near real-time transcript.

[More:]

Bill Gates spoke in a conversation with Dean Newton at Zellerbach Hall today.

As people arrived for the event, we handed out about 700-800 flyers, which probably reached over half the audience. You can see the flyers at http://freewisdom.org/gates/.

Dean Newton's conversation with Bill Gates was consistently positive about Microsoft. The only negative reference that Newton made was to ask Bill what Microsoft has learned after ten years of dealing with litigation. Bill's answer can be summarized as "We were naive to think that we didn't need government lobbyists. Now we have them." During the conversation, Bill made a false statement about the GPL (claiming that it prevents you from selling software commercially). Bill also claimed credit for starting the PC software industry, which he presented as his biggest contribution.

During the question period, i got to ask a question. It was largely ineffective. I noted that Bill had described universities as very important sources of new innovators, and that recruiting from them was probably important to him. I then asked the audience for a show of hands of people who would have concerns working for a company that had been found guilty of illegal business practices, limited its customers' freedom to choose, and misled the public. Dean Newton cut me off; only three or four hands in the entire hall went up. Bill asked me to get to the question. I asked him if he felt it would be good for his recruiting efforts to improve those business practices. He said "Sure!" and that was all.

None of the other 5 or 6 questioners posed questions challenging Microsoft's ethics. Dean Newton also took several opportunities to congratulate Bill between questions.

Mentions of the resistance by the press

I've seen a few mentions of Ping's question... here ("Gates highlights critical role of university research to maintain U.S. leadership in technology"; UC Berkeley Press Release):

During a question-and-answer session with students, Gates was asked how he balances being a philanthropist and a businessman, about the computer industry's impact on the environment, whether Microsoft would attract more students to its workforce if it didn't have antitrust troubles with the U.S. Justice Department and the European Commission, and to identify hot areas in the computer industry's future.

here ("Two Words from Bill Gates: Computer Science"; PC World):

At Berkeley, he also faced some tough questions from students about the effect of the PC industry on the environment and on Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior.

here ("Gates opens up"; SF Chronicle):

Gates took questions from the UC Berkeley students, who were deferential and friendly, apart from one who said that Microsoft's "illegal business practices" were a turnoff to potential recruits.

While Newton appeared perturbed by the questioner's lack of diplomacy, Gates took it in stride, answering with a simple "Sure," the question whether his company would benefit from improved business practices and prompting an appreciative round of laughter.

here ("Gates opens up to Berkeley students"; Oakland Tribune):

Still, one speaker, who identified himself as a computer science graduate student, challenged Gates on what he called Microsoft's illegal business practices. "Do you think you might do better at recruiting students from universities if you improve your business practices?" the student asked.

"Sure," Gates responded affably, drawing laughter and applause from the hundreds of students in the audience.

here ("Gates puts on the charm in visit"; San Jose Mercury News):

One Berkeley computer science student, Ka-Ping Yee, ruffled the polite event when he expressed doubt about how Microsoft expected to recruit talented young computer scientists if it continued with the business practices that got it into antitrust trouble. Gates interrupted him and asked if he had a question. Yee asked if Microsoft would do better at recruiting if it changed its business practices. ``Sure,'' Gates replied.

Outside the event later, Microsoft employee Mark Hammond tried to convince Yee that Microsoft really wasn't so bad and that it was changing so that it took the responsibilities of leadership more seriously. ``We really are listening,'' he said.

and here ("Gates: PCs fall short"; C|Net):

A handful of students passed out fliers before the speech, taking Microsoft to task for its business practices and universities to task for allowing companies like Microsoft to dictate a corporate curriculum.

Several of the students involved in that effort took issue with Gates' assertion that companies can't build a business around software that is distributed under the General Public License (GPL).

"He made a pretty clearly false statement about the GPL," graduate student Ka-Ping Yee said. "He should issue a public retraction."

[...]

As Gates headed to his next stop, two of Microsoft's Bay Area-based "developer evangelists" stuck around to meet with the students who took issue with the company.

"There are plenty of times when we get reamed out," said Keen Browne, a former Linux enthusiast who joined Microsoft about a year ago. "I think we need to do that."

Graduate student Morgan Ames said she was glad to talk with the Microsoft representatives but said it doesn't erase what Gates said. "He kind of misrepresents things a lot," Ames said. "Most of the people that went out of here went out with the wrong impression."

Was it worth it?

Of course it was worth it! The fact that we even got a mention in the press, that we handed out flyers to nearly half of the audience is significant; protest, dissent and education often takes longer than a single event. I personally handed out flyers to the CIO/faculty/bigwig crowd (I know a lot of them being the graduate representative on the eBerkeley Steering Committee). Berkeley is especially starting to see the benefit of not paying licensing fees and, instead, paying developers to contribute to large open source projects; a good example is Sakai.

Granted, in addition to the questions Ping wished he had asked,

I wish i had instead asked "Because of the government's near-total dependence on Microsoft software, doesn't Microsoft have a civic duty to open all of its file formats to the public?"

Or "You made a false statement about the GPL a moment ago when you claimed that it prevents you from selling commercial software. Would you care to make a public retraction of that statement?"

I could add a few: "Mr. Gates, would you pledge, like IBM recently did, to not use Microsoft's patent portfolio against free and open source software. If no, why not?" and "Mr. Gates, when do you plan to open up some of Windows so that people like those in this audience can try to fix what your company has so hopelessly broken." or even "Now that the patent office has rejected Microsoft's FAT patent, do you fear that other MS patents will also be revoked and what is Microsoft planning to do about that?"