You of 10 Years Ago != You of Today
People change with time, and are not necessarily the same as they were in the past. Forming a collective of ones entire life and cherry-picking various moments simply gives you highlights, both good and bad. They don't speak to what the person is right now.
Probably your best bet to gage someone is to look at what they've been doing recently, going back maybe no more than ~5 years. Here you'll see someone whose learned from their past mistakes, likely acting differently due to life lessons, and are essentially the most authentic "version" of a person they currently are.
Here are some his "inventions":
Are you referring to the discussion Gates and Ballmer had about diluting Allen? That seems to be a way to dilute a founder who was slacking off. The word partnership is used several times; this may imply that everybody was 100% vested already. If so, this is the only thing they could do to somebody who wasn't pulling his weight.
I've met Bill Gates, so I'll stick with my personal opinion. You're entitled to yours.
Where have you supported that claim? If you've "met" BG, I invite you to post some already-known anecdotes etc about his conduct as a friend, which is exactly what I asked about.
Gates and Allen were friends at when they went to school together. I went to the same school some years after them, and drew my own opinions based on first and second hand experiences with both of them.
No matter what you believe about the quality of their friendship, there's a teaching lesson for co-founders in their story.
Ownership shares are not like salary (imho): they're not just for past work, but also for future contributions.
Without specifics on to what extent exactly they were planning to dilute him, I am not prepared to condemn BillG. YMMV.
Jobs' actual cheating through a straightforward lie to Woz wrt how much they got paid for Atari's contract job they did is FAR worse than a planning conversation BillG had. IMHO. http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/hackers/steve-wozniak/
I guess Paul just wants the world to know that the image of Gates as our benevolent patron of philanthropy is itself revisionism, lest anyone forget that Bill Gates was one of the least loyal and trustworthy friends a person could ask for.
It doesn't surprise me that HN sides with the victor in cases like this, but I would argue that any serious business person should watch and learn carefully from the lessons of two close friends who changed the world and ended up disliking each other.