David Coursey: Bill Gates Is Not the Next Linus Torvalds

I just read this opinion which is about open standards and he starts out by writing this:

When people stop whining that Microsoft isn't becoming an open source company, I'll be able to stop writing columns like this one, in which I will (again) patiently explain that people who are expecting Bill Gates to become Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman are bound to be disappointed.

What is this guy smoking? Who exactly is expecting Bill Gates to become the next open source guru? I think you'll find it pretty darn difficult to find a person that believes that. A bit later he continues:

That the open source community might have to make an exception to its licensing structure seems a minor inconvenience compared to what they are getting. Microsoft is not required to let people tinker with its formats, but it should allow the open source community to include those formats—as Microsoft has written and will document them—in its products.

It is pretty clear that he don't have a clue about how open source "works" because it is more or less impossible to make an exception as he suggests and it will most certainly not be a minor inconvenience. The next paragraph in the article only makes that even more clear. There is one paragraph I agree with though:

I believe this whole debate has been miscast. The discussion shouldn't be between Microsoft and the open sorcerers, who are unlikely to ever find satisfaction in anything Redmond does, but between Microsoft and its customers.

That is completely correct. The important question to ask then, is what the MS customers, especially states and government customers, should require of MS. Bob Sutor (Vice President of Standards and Open Source for the IBM Corporation) have written a nice post about exactly that. It is quite clear to me that it would be smart move of David Coursey to do some research instead of writing clueless articles like this one. Isn't that what journalists are supposed to do?