Yesterday was the last day of Bill Gates as a full time employee at Microsoft. Love him or hate him this man changed the world. Including your world. A true visionary he had that rebellious idea that the software costs money. Before that software was seen as something that comes with the hardware. That vision made him the richest man in the world. At the same time that another true genius called Richard Stallman came up with the idea that software should be free (as in speech), Gates wrote his infamous Open Letter to Hobbyists where he stated that software was a product and should be payed for in order to increase its quality and stimulate developers.

   Bill Gates will continue to be chairman of the board in Microsoft and is still the largest single shareholder so you can bet that his word will still matter. His everyday job from now on will be his charity foundation - the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

   However there is one more important event. Windows XP will retire on Monday. From then on Microsoft will not sell Windows XP. This edition of Windows was the most successful of all and it took 5 years for Microsoft to release a successor which is the longest timespan between Windows releases.

   In my opinion these two events mark the end of an era.