If antitrust cases were decided upon the good that a defendant has done, then you would have prevailed long ago. You have without a doubt produced and inspired extraordinary innovation. You have built an industry upon a powerful platform.

And more important, beyond this commercial or geek-driven perspective, you personally have done extraordinary good for this country and the world. You are a man who has given $22 billion to charity. The work you and your wife have done to fight disease in the poorest regions of the world is unmatched in history. The lives you will save cannot be counted. Schindler had a list; you will have nations.

But antitrust law is not about whether a defendant is good or bad; it targets actions that weaken consumer choice and hence chill innovation. And so in your appeal to the American people, in your defense against the charges that have been made, how do you respond to that ideal? What is the principle that you would raise against it? Is it simply, as your lawyers insist, that you've done nothing to weaken consumer choice? That you've done nothing to make it harder to choose one product over another? That you've done nothing to interfere with the right of PC makers to offer different options on the desktop? That you did nothing to undermine innovations that might have weakened the dominance of Windows? Or is the principle that you should be free to innovate as you wish, even to innovate in a way that uses the power of your platform to disadvantage innovations that think about computing differently?

That is a principle that one could defend. But if it is your principle, you would be honorable if you simply said it and defended it. If you stepped away from your powerful PR team and from the wise filtering of your lawyers and simply said what you believe.

You are not a politician, Mr. Gates. You don't need to posture. You are free to say what you believe, independent of what the government believes it has proven. You are respected for that freedom. So say what you believe, Mr. Gates. What are the principles you would defend?