[Am-info] Microsoft 'donations'

[John Poltorak]

On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 06:42:14AM -0500, Joe Barr wrote:
> There was a story recently, I think on ZDNet, which broke it down
> roughly like this: 35 million in cash and 100 million plus in software.
> 
> I'll try to remember where I saw that.

Just looking at the story here:-

http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=207250

It says $36.6M cash, $179M in software in the last fiscal year.

It would be interesting to see the basis of the valuation of the software.
It doesn't cost Microsoft a cent to give away a licence for their own 
software. 

I wonder how the press reports it when BillG gives away these vast sums.
It would be interesting to gather a few articles about his benevolence.


> 
> On Wed, 2002-05-01 at 05:31, John Poltorak wrote:
> > It is often reported how much Bill Gates or Microsoft give away in 
> > charitable donations.
> > 
> > Is there any way to evaluate how much of these donations are simply the 
> > market value of some Microsoft software?
> > 
> > I'm sure if Microsoft give away 100 licences for MS Office, some newspaper 
> > hack is sure to report a generous donation of $50,000 by Microsoft.
> > 
> > -- 
> > John

-- 
John