The End of Communism

Back in the late 1980's, a company called Aldus redefined desktop publishing (dtp) with their software package 'Pagemaker'. This was at a time when some companies had their entire business model built on designing and developing fonts. It was also a time when a little software company had been trying to release a new graphical interface for the burgeoning PC market. The first two versions of which had failed miserably.

The software company in question was Microsoft and the failed software was Windows. But during the development of their third incarnation of this new graphical interface, one of the people in Microsoft approached the head of the company, Bill Gates, and suggested that they include 11 fonts for free with Windows 3 in order to make the user experience more pleasant. Bill Gates immediately turned to the guy and said, "What are you, a communist?" This was one of Bill Gates' key phrases and every important person at Microsoft had at one time or another been accused of being a communist by him whenever they suggested something that is counter intuitive to the capitalistic business model.

Of course, Microsoft did give away free fonts with Windows 3 and jt became an instant success. This in turn led to the collapse of the entire font market almost overnight. And the rest as they say is history. Bill Gates has arguably changed the world in so many ways through the software developed at Microsoft. Next Monday, the 30th of June, will be his last day as an employee of the company that he helped cofound with his pal, Paul Allen. His guiding presence and business acumen will no doubt be sorely missed at Microsoft. And so this week's TechWatch bids a fond farewell to one of the most instrumental personalities in the computer world. We in the TechWatch offices consider it an honour and a privilege to have been witnesses to a personality the likes of which we'll probably never see again in our lifetimes.