Does Jody Allen secretly hate Paul? Given the literal billions they have, it seems pretty spiteful how the LCM and Cinerama were treated.
I visited the LCM in 2016 as part of a computer arch course, it was really quite special to see working systems from the over 50 years ago and get to use them.
> Does Jody Allen secretly hate Paul? Given the literal billions they have, it seems pretty spiteful how the LCM and Cinerama were treated.
She probably has her own priorities, and is shifting things to match them.
IIRC, this phenomenon somewhat well known in philanthropy: if you setup a long-lived foundation, it will it will end up reflecting the priorities of the future staff even if those bear little resemblance (or are even opposed) to those of the founder. Everyone wants to do what they want, not what some dead guy wanted, even if all the money was actually his.
I believe this has caused some people to give up on the perpetual foundation idea, and structure their fortunes to get spent on their goals by a certain deadline.
It probably would have been better for the LCM if Paul Allen had set it up as some autonomous endowed thing controlled by a board of hard-core retro-computing enthusiasts.
It was well known that she had her own priorities before Paul's death. It's unfortunate he ignored that.
> Former members of the security detail... have said in sworn depositions that Vulcan CEO Jody Allen sexually harassed bodyguards while also directing them to smuggle animal bones out of Africa and Antarctica. At least two former employees said they heard Jody Allen had smuggled ivory out of Africa in violation of U.S. and international law...
For anyone curious about this phenomenon, the Ford Foundation is a notable example. Henry Ford was notably racist and the Ford Foundation does a lot that is focused on racial diversity.
Isn't that exactly the same phenomenon but with a positive outcome? Ford setup a long-lived foundation, and it ended up up reflecting the priorities of the future staff and bore little resemblance (or was even opposed) to those of the founder.
Isn't that to be expected? It was offered as an example of the phenomenon.
> ...but with a positive outcome?
There are people who think shuttering the Living Computer Museum is a positive outcome. I'd wager the vast majority of Americans would chose to spend that money on something besides keeping obsolete computers running.
I doubt she hates her late brother, any more than any widow who sells off or throws away her late husband's computer collection after his death (which occurs so, so often that it is probably the normal outcome after the collector's death, as opposed to an exception) hates him. It's disinterest.
Most late husbands don't leave an endowment big enough to cover a potentially perpetual upkeep for their collections either, but Allen wasn't most people, and he personally was significant in the history of computers obviously. Normally, I'm not a fan of these extremely wealthy people setting up dead hand organizations like charitable foundations to affect society after their death, but museums that preserve aspects of life from their times and information about their lives seem like a pretty good use case.
I have to imagine she doesn’t care, and 20 employees even is a chunk of change if you have some advisors looking at maximizing the dollars in whatever trust.
Of course the fact that Paul didn’t explicitly set something in stone for like 50 years despite the billions… really sucks, cuz that place was awesome
The contents of the will aren’t public but there’s been uncontested reporting that it calls for everything he owned to be liquidated.
“Paul directed that the trust be liquidated upon his death and the assets used to fund his passion projects,” a source said. “None of this is up in the air. The instructions are clear: The sports franchises and everything in the trust must be sold.”
Maintaining these projects ain't cheap even for billionaires (by that I don't mean it would make them broke (or even close), but spending hundreds of thousands or even millions for something you have no interest is gonna sound expensive).
They need to be financially self-sufficient to even have a chance, IMHO. Even then it isn't a given. Just like people sometimes clean their houses even when they still have tons of space.
Seattle could afford that easy cheesy. Really this is down to the lack of a strong CEO (probably because of the way this was incubated inside of Vulcan). A strong CEO could probably throw enough benefits and special events to run a 2-3MM operation and possibly get a proper endowment from some of the very wealthy people who live within the Puget Sound region. Oh, and that money would be tax deductible and you would get invited to some great networking events.
That CEO could also pay themselves $250k without blowback either.
Unfortunately it wasn't set up like that when Paul was alive (more like a personal collection). And after his death, the chance it became like that is even slimmer.
Allen had a net worth of something like $20 billion. That’s enough money to fund the museum for the next 5,000 years. Maintaining a project like this is NOT expensive.
It's not about how much money he (or his widow) has, it's about no one likes to randomly pour money into something they have zero interest in, and we're talking about money perhaps in millions per year. And the administrative headache.
Exactly. Money isn't enough to keep things running in perpetuity or even for a long time -- ultimately everything has to be administered by an organization that has a self-interest in sustaining itself with a board etc.
If money is simply set aside to fund something, somebody still has to hire somebody to manage the thing, and oversee their performance, and fire the manager if they underperform, and find a new manager, and sign off on big decisions like a change of space, and so forth. But if that trustee just... doesn't care to do that... then what exactly are you going to do? Somebody would have to sue to enforce that overseeing, but frequently nobody cares to sue or has standing.
Seems like the bills are still being paid, though. The museum is still physically there, and someone (Vulcan) is keeping the vintage computers maintained and operational.
Implement ticket sales, events, fundraising? Get a donation from Gates? Buy the land or move somewhere cheaper. Invest in some solar panels and skylights?
I visited the LCM in 2016 as part of a computer arch course, it was really quite special to see working systems from the over 50 years ago and get to use them.