Bill Gates Embraces Open-Source Knowledge ... In Philanthropy

04:00 PM Jul 21, 2006

Is it too early to start calling Microsoft mogul Bill Gates the modern Rockefeller?

Succeeding a career as a ruthless information-age corporate titan, Gates' bazillionaire foundation is the hottest thing in philanthropy, his glamour enhanced by the affections of Warren Buffett. Now comes word that Gates is going to use the hammer of his capacious pocketbook to force AIDS researchers to share their data the same way he depends upon programmers not to. (Hat tip: Smart Mobs)

The irony layer-cake offers a veritable feast to fatten the gullet of bloggers, developers, convention speakers, op-ed writers, and partisans of every make and variety: the menacing paladin of proprietary software, open-sourcing scientific research when he puts on his white hat.

Though it's hardly ours to unlock the secret of the Helmsman's heart, the irony goes well deeper than Windows vs. Linux. Gates' charity -- considerable though it is -- can certainly be read as a partially or wholly cynical hedge against the IP-busting predilections of the economic fringes infecting the neoliberal trade regime, or a (witting or not) prop to that disastrous construct.

Whether that's true or not in a literal sense, for the affect of goodness and evil so lucratively and inextricably twinned, what reference point could be more apt than the sultan of Standard Oil? The Medicis?

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