Three years ago, celebrated security expert Dan Geer lost his job at @stake when he co-authored a paper on the dangers that the Microsoft 'monoculture' represented for end-users.
Last fall, he authored a similar warning in a [a href="vny!://news.com.com/Massachusetts+assaults+monoculture/2010-7344_3-5968740.html"]Perspective piece[/a] he wrote for CNETNews.com, applauding the action of Massachusetts in adopting OpenDocument Format, thereby reducing its vulnerability to the same type of risk.
Four days ago, Dan's [a href="vny!://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20060523181724678"]prediction came true[/a], when users of Word (but not those that only trade files created in StarOffice, OpenOffice, or other ODF compliant software) began to be infected with the Backdoor.Ginwui virus - a malicious Trojan program that hitches a ride on bogus Word documents. In short, an object lesson that in IT, as in biology, those that exist in diverse gene pools are at a lower risk, both individually and collectively, from those that subsist in a proprietary monoculture.
