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Bill Gates

Original nameBill Gates

Co-Founder of Microsoft, Key Driver of the Industrialization of Personal Computer Software

Those Who Turned Invention Into Industry · Industry-Builders

The MS-DOS/Windows Operating SystemThe Software Industry Business ModelMicrosoft

Who they are

Bill Gates (1955– ) is a co-founder of Microsoft, who dropped out of Harvard University in 1975 and co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen, at first developing a BASIC interpreter for early personal computers. In 1980, when IBM, preparing to launch its personal-computer line, urgently needed an operating system and came to Microsoft to discuss cooperation, Gates bought an operating system called QDOS from a small Seattle company, improved it, and licensed it to IBM as "MS-DOS"; the key business decision was that Gates insisted on keeping the right to license MS-DOS to other computer makers at the same time, rather than binding it exclusively to IBM — a decision later proved highly farsighted: as the PC-clone market expanded swiftly, MS-DOS and the later Windows, by their broad cross-vendor compatibility, gradually became the de facto standard platform of personal computers worldwide, and Microsoft thereby grew from a limited software developer into one of the most valuable technology firms in the world. Gates himself was famed for tough business competition and a near-monopolistic grip on the operating-system market, and Microsoft was thereafter investigated and penalized many times over antitrust issues by US and EU regulators. Since the 2000s he has gradually stepped back from Microsoft’s daily management, turning his main energy to the global public-health and education philanthropy led by the Gates Foundation.

Primary sourcesHistorical archives of the founding of MicrosoftAnnual reports of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Key stories

Buying an Operating System, Changing the Business Model

When IBM, preparing its PC line, came to Microsoft seeking an operating system, Gates in turn bought at low price a prototype system called QDOS ("Quick and Dirty Operating System") from a small Seattle software firm, improved and packaged it, and licensed it to IBM as "MS-DOS," the key being that he insisted on keeping the right to license this system to other makers at the same time — precisely this decision let MS-DOS spread worldwide with the explosive growth of the PC-clone market, and Microsoft’s business model thereby went from "selling technology outright to a single customer" to "licensing software to the whole industry."

Dropping Out of Harvard, Founding Microsoft

While studying at Harvard, Gates keenly sensed that the early personal-computer market was about to see explosive growth yet widely lacked practical software support, and resolutely chose to drop out to co-found Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen, focusing on developing programming languages and operating-system software for personal computers — a decision that seemed quite risky at the time, thereafter proven to hit precisely the historical window of the personal-computer industry about to see exponential growth.

Version differences

In the 1990s Microsoft was investigated and penalized in turn by the US Department of Justice and EU antitrust regulators for suspected use of its operating-system market monopoly to crush competitors, a history often mentioned together as the controversial background in evaluating Gates’s business achievement.

Relationships

Mentor

🔌Jack Kilby 🖥️Grace Hopper　The compiler and high-level-language ideas Hopper pioneered were the methodological basis for Microsoft’s later large-scale development of system software

Nemesis

📱Steve Jobs

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The public-image shift from "software monopolist" to "philanthropist"Over the past two decades Gates turned his main energy to global public-health and education philanthropy, and his public image thereby gradually shifted from the once-controversial "software monopolist" to one of the widely recognized representative figures of global philanthropy.

Appears in

The Birth of the Computer and the Information AgeGates and Jobs: Two Paths of the Personal-Computer Age

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