Year to Success had this inspiring thought: <blockquote> Success is creating jobs and opportunity. Gates' company, Microsoft, employs more than 50,000 people in 72 countries and regions. </blockquote>

This is the same Bill Gates who wrote in an internal memo:

<blockquote> If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors. </blockquote>

Yes, Bill Gates is basically _the_ face of IT. He's the only personality people outside the IT industry really hear about, really get to know. And yes, Microsoft is pretty darn influential.

But gwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah... 50,000 people is a drop in the ocean. Let's talk about Microsoft's ecosystem of partners and independent service vendors. And let's not just talk about what Microsoft enables, but what they also squash.

• Read the transcript of Free Culture: Lawrence Lessig Keynote from OSCON 2002
• Listen to the speech. It's good. Really good.