The BBC, Gates and revisionism

By Sam Varghese
Monday, 23 June 2008 09:37

Opinion and Analysis

This column doesn't often step beyond its boundaries and offer a take on things outside the free and open source software arena. More than nine-tenths of what comes up for discussion here has, at least, a tangential connection with some aspect of FOSS. So why am I writing about William Gates III?


I'd like to crave readers' indulgence to deal with a topic that will probably get more traction as the week unfolds - the departure of the less nerdy of Microsoft's co-founders, Bill Gates, from his official position at the company. For the uninitiated, the nerdier of the two co-founders was Paul Allen, a painfully shy man who split off from the company a long. long time ago.

Last week, the BBC ran a programme on Gates, featuring interviews with him and also others like Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, Ray Ozzie, the next chief software architect of the company, Apple I and II creator Steve Wozniak, Sir Alan Sugar of Amstrad and a couple of others. (Video clips are here - you don't need to think while watching because there are patronising sub-headings every minute or so to tell you what it's all about.)

What was appalling about the programme was the lack of any apparent preparation on the part of the interviewer, Fiona Bruce. Gates was able to paint a wonderful revisionist picture of the past and Ballmer actually got away with describing Microsoft as an ethical company.

It is fitting that the BBC decided to feature Gates on its Money programme and not on its Technology programme; after all, Microsoft is first and foremost a marketing company. Technology comes a distant second.

As the grand-daddy of all tech journalists, Robert X. Cringely, told me in an interview some years ago: "Microsoft is about money, not innovation. They aren't opposed to innovation and like to be seen as innovators, but what really matters to them as a company is the money. Think of it that way and a lot of what they do starts to make sense. When I give speeches (and why haven't I been asked to speak lately in Oz?) I like to pull out a $US20 note and point out that there is something about that note that bothers Bill Gates - that it is in my pocket. Microsoft really does want all the money and I'm not sure they won't get it."

The BBC obtained an interview with Gates after two years of asking, so maybe Bruce was scared to ask hard questions. But as a public broadcaster, doesn't it become all that more necessary to ensure that revisionism does not take place at the British taxpayer's cost?