I think Bill Gates wants to do good, but he is also a man hopelessly in love with capitalism as a system. I think he is genuinly convinved that capitalism makes everybody better off. The idea that one could just give away patents for free, just runs so counter to his deeply held beliefs about intellectual property. One can just see what he said and thought about open source software like Linux in the past.

Bill Gates is to me a reminder of why charity as an alternative to tax funded welfare is a bad thing. I leaves strategic decisions about how to help people into the hands of an unelected person. It gives the rich a lot of mindshare and influence on how the poor are helped. What ends up mattering is not the quality of your ideas but the size of your wallet. That is a bad setup IMHO. Having said that, I do think it is possible for somebody to have good intentions, even if I disagree with their approach.

I do think Bill Gates has good intentions, I just don't agree with his way of doing it. We should be able say we disagree with their solution without implying that they are some sort of villain.