Talk:History of Microsoft

Is Micro-Soft really founded on April 4, 1975?
This is a request from Japanese Wikipedia contributors. There is no reliable evidence to show that April 4, 1975 is the date Microsoft was founded, according to a Japanese book published by Keio University. It would be much appreciated if any English contributors could verify the exact date with reliable sources. Here is the summarized translation of the Japanese source.

''April 1975 is the month Paul Allen was employed by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems. However, there is no evidence to show that Microsoft was founded at the same time. Gates and Allen officially signed a written business partnership on February 3, 1977. Before this formal agreement, the two worked on the business and product development on an oral agreement basis so that no reliable source supports the date. Moreover, the name of Micro-Soft was invented in the summer of 1975. So, "Micro-Soft" cannot be founded prior to the summer. Today, Both Gates and Allen have talked to many reliable sources that Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975. However, their interview comments saying April 4 cannot be found before 2005. Therefore, the author of the book published by Keio University casts a significant doubt that Gates and Allen invented a 30-year anniversary.''

Then, one of Japanese Wikipedia contributors further researched to find other sources. Author = Janice Jorgensen, Publisher = St. James Press, Date =1994, Title = Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands: Durable goods, Page = 342, Quote = "on April 4, 1975, Gates and Allen officially established Microsoft as a business partnership." This document, however, does not include any interview comment, and does not show any reason or source for the date April 4. So far, there seems no reliable information on what happened and was agreed on April 4.

Could anyone show any reliable source on the date when Microsoft was founded that is published before 1980? Thank you. --by ProfessorPine (talk) 01:09, 16 February 2019 (UTC) --Modified by Ilrtropc (talk) 01:43, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Merger discussion
Request received to merge articles: Criticism of Microsoft into History of Microsoft; dated: 01/2021.

Proposer's Rationale: This is going to be a tricky one, but conceptually, Criticism of Microsoft should be merged into History of Microsoft. WP:CRIT is my rationale. These two articles together are over 200K, so a content fork is needed. I'd propose one based upon time ranges, but I'm not sure that's the best. Jdphenix (talk) 07:06, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Discussion
sounds like a good way to make a lot of criticisms of MS disappear. Covidtonthemurderhornet (talk) 04:01, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm opposed to this merge. It's logical to have a dedicated criticism article for this topic, since there's a lot to cover there. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by a fork. Can you elaborate on that? Thanks, DesertPipeline (talk) 13:50, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I am the author of the book "The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide" published in 2000 by Addison Wesley. I actually added a complete chapter on Microsoft criticism to that book because it is such an important topic. I will point out that it is pretty standard practice in the literary business to separate criticism of a work from that work - while you can purchase a copy of "Little House On the Prairie" that has Lit Crit included, it is not standard and those texts are dwarfed by the amount of Lit Crit of "Little House" that is published separately. I don't see much different here. The article page on the Microsoft company is a showpiece of the company, a reader would go to there to find out about Microsoft. Criticism of Microsoft is a separate issue from the company itself just as criticism of "Little House" is separate from the book itself. While it would be certainly welcome to link from the main Microsoft article to this page, that is all that should be done. Microsoft's products so fundamentally affect the entire computer industry that it is important to the industry - that is the same industry that without which this site would not exist - to question the motives of the company. It's not like criticizing a manufacturer of electric motors since many companies make motors that can be substituted in. There is no drop in replacement for a piece of Microsoft software. Tmittelstaedt — Preceding undated comment added 06:25, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Oppose: Per WP:CRIT: Dedicated "Criticism of ..." articles are sometimes appropriate for organizations, businesses, [...] provided the sources justify it; Microsoft is obviously a large enough organisation with sufficient criticism in many forms to justify a dedicated article. User:GKFXtalk 22:32, 5 April 2021 (UTC)