Bill Gates may have his share of legal problems, but he’s also got some loyal fans in the IT community. In a recent survey by RHI Consulting (www.rhic.com) in Menlo Park, Calif., 1,400 CIOs were asked who in the technology field they admire most, and Billy the Kid topped the list:
37 per cent – Bill Gates (chairman and chief software architect for Microsoft)
19 per cent – Michael Dell (chairman and CEO for Dell)
9 per cent – Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple Computer)
7 per cent – Linus Torvalds (Linux inventor)
5 per cent – William Hewlett (cofounder of Hewlett-Packard)
3 per cent – Larry Ellison (chairman and CEO for Oracle)
3 per cent – Scott McNealy (chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems)
17 per cent – Other/Don’t know*
*In this category, survey respondents named Marc Andreessen (cofounder of Netscape), John Chambers (president and CEO of Cisco Systems), Eric Schmidt (chairman and CEO of Novell), and Andy Grove (chairman of Intel).