Perspective: Massachusetts assaults monoculture

When governments maintain their public records electronically, does a member of the public have to buy something from a specific company to read those records? The rational, fair, democratic answer has to be "no."

The Massachusetts executive branch agrees in blunt and perceptive language: "A public record, once stored electronically, must not require a proprietary computer program to read it; it should be readable by many different word processors, spreadsheets and other productivity applications, regardless of vendor."

Simple, isn't it? A public record on paper requires no one to buy anything. Everyone can read it. And it more or less keeps forever. That's a good standard, and Massachusetts will soon require public records be held in OpenDocument Format.

OpenDocument Format, unlike Microsoft Word's .doc, is a way to save electronic documents that anyone can read. The OpenDocument Format specifications are free; any competent programmer can produce a fully featured word processor or spreadsheet that will work with it. What's more, since no company owns the standard itself, forward and backward compatibility with former and future word processors is guaranteed.

No more: "Somebody upgraded, so now everyone has to." By making the "public" in "public record" mean something, Massachusetts gets better accessibility, plus competition--not a sole-source provider.

In biology, a monoculture--a singular species that supplants all others--is a bad thing.

In biology, a monoculture--a singular species that supplants all others--is a bad thing. When every plant is the same species, every plant is susceptible to the same predators, the same diseases. Examples are as plentiful as they are sad: Consider the virus that brought on the Irish potato famine or the boll weevil that nearly obliterated the South's cotton crop in the early 20th century, and you see the destruction that human-made monocultures bring upon themselves.

Computers are no different. Computer viruses spread efficiently, lethally when all computers on a network run the same software. MyDoom, Melissa and MSBlast were a function not of the Internet, but of a Windows monoculture. They caused havoc because they were designed for specific vulnerabilities of Windows. Since one virus generally affects one species of software, any computing monoculture poses a hazard the same way it does in nature.

Microsoft's monopoly in the market creates a Microsoft monoculture on the network. Microsoft maintains its monopoly and the monoculture through user-level lock-in, especially by keeping document formats as trade secrets. Massachusetts noted as much in its antitrust proceeding against the company. And so long as that lock-in persists, there will be no solution to the monoculture risk.

As a matter of logic alone: If you care about the security of the commonwealth, then you care about the risk of a computing monoculture. If you care about the risk of a computing monoculture, then you care about barriers to diversification. If you care about barriers to diversification, then you care about user-level lock-in. And if you care about user-level lock-in, then you must break the proprietary format stranglehold on the commonwealth. Until that is done, the user-level lock-in will preclude diversification and the monoculture bomb keeps ticking.

The risk of remaining as we are exceeds the understanding of nonspecialists, including, with all due respect, the average legislator.

The Massachusetts Department of Administration and Finance does care, and its Enterprise Technical Reference Model specifies OpenDocument Format. That standard is precisely what is needed and not a moment too soon.

OpenDocument Format is the point of maximum leverage. Of all the things Massachusetts could do to make risk diversification possible, the most effective is to remove user-level lock-in by making document storage formats no longer the one thing that forces everyone to use Microsoft Office. As long as the commonwealth voluntarily allows itself to be locked in by the proprietary document formats of a proven monopoly, the commonwealth cannot diversify and therefore cannot mitigate its risk.

The risk of remaining as we are exceeds the understanding of nonspecialists, including, with all due respect, the average legislator. There are new Windows viruses all the time. Perhaps 15 percent of all desktop Windows computers are running malicious software at any time. The monoculture makes attacks automatable--so automatable that there is money to be made. And, sure enough, the menace once posed by teenage hackers has been replaced by that of professional, organized crime.

Do we say that Microsoft is the only interpreter of a public record? That everyone has to buy Microsoft Word to read the documents their taxes paid for? That monoculture is public policy? Or do we say that a public record is not a public record unless it is in OpenDocument Format? I'll take the latter, both because I agree with the idea that a public record is not a public record unless it is in an open format, and also because this is an unavoidable step if we are to dodge the monoculture bullet. The former reason is moral. The latter reason is self-protection.

If we miss this chance, we'll keep paying through the nose until there is a cascade failure among our identically vulnerable computers. It would give no decent person pleasure then to say, "I told you so."

Biography
Daniel Geer is chief scientist at data security company Verdasys. He is past president of the Usenix computing systems association.

More Perspectives

privatizing?

What about the effort of the party currently in power in Washington to privatize public records and even the weather service? Let the market decide what format is best, by seeing which one brings in the most profit! Enough of this "free access" stuff, make people pay to get access to government documents and the results of government research. And if the result is proprietary formats available only to those with certain hardware and software, let alone electronic payment accounts, well, the market is always right. Right?

Sigh.

[farbuckle]

The whole world is watching Massachusetts

The Windows monopoly and its mass of attendant malware has gone on far too long. Now, Massachusetts' top IT official is trying to do something about it.

What does he get for it? An obviously politically-inspired "investigation" into how he spent trifling amounts of money at open-source conferences and backpedaling from the administration that once backed ODF wholeheartedly.

This is the same sort of witch hunt that led to Dan Geer's firing at @Stake when he first put forth his monoculture thesis. It is the malice that got Houston's CIO investigated when he chose SimDesk over Windows and Office.

Confront Microsoft and they will send droves of people to hound you. What they don't anticipate is that some -- like Geer -- will survive the beating and come back stronger.

Gov. Romney, Mass. Sen. Pacheco need to get the message now:

The whole world is watching.

[Lord Kalthorn]

Pardon?

I am afraid I didn't get the point of the Post. It was kind of all over the place. I'm afraid nobody in Open-Source; or Apple for that matter, will agree with you that Windows has a Monopoly. The Monopoly Organisations around the world would probably not be too pleased that you have insinuated a company has managed it under their noises without them doing anything about it. Also the idea of Windows having attendant malware is laughable at best. Unless you consider the reporting services and protection services you get with any build of XP are malware and trying to kill you.

Perhaps you need to take some antihistamines; I would hate for you to sneeze your fantastically adept mind out of your arse.

[Lord Kalthorn]

Monoculture is stability

Humanity itself is a Monoculture. There are no differing species, barely differences between races beyond physical appearance; and a distaste for alcohol in some who boiled water rather than fermenting it when evolving. What has that brought humanity? Stability; numbers exceeding most other mammal species, and a level of technology over only a few thousand years that no other species has ever had. Peace, or at least relative peace; animal species fight all the time, perhaps not with guns or nuclear weapons (you cannot hug your children with nuclear arms! that always makes me laugh) but all species will fight with each other. Yeah, diseases kill millions of people a year and very rarely will one disease only kill one person because we?re all so alike; but because of our monoculture we?re powerful enough to take it.

Now imagine that with software. We have the big Microsoft monoculture of software packages. It has allowed development and the use of computers grow tremendously over the past 20 years; to say that Microsoft isn?t the reason behind a whole load of that would be stupid. It brings compatibility to a completely new level, and grows technologies from its developer base. People have got used to things that Microsoft have created by its Monoculture; Plug and Play for instance. We are used to it, all of us, that when we buy a piece of Hardware it just works, we plug it in and go. Sometimes we put a CD in to do that, but a whole load of stuff works just like that without a CD. We are used to buying some software and seeing it work perfectly when we install it. Yeah, perhaps it makes a lot of computers vulnerable to a lot more viruses than if we had a thousand operating systems, or if nobody used the same operating system as anybody else, but that same thing gives us that compatibility and the numbers really aren?t that bad. If you are seriously unlucky, you will be hit maybe twice a year. The only reason there are so many computers with this malicious software on it is simply that a lot of Microsoft?s users are people who don?t know anything about computers. People who would not have computers, with Microsoft making it easy and cheap enough. However, just like doctors curing the weaker or less bright of us in our Human Monoculture, technologies are springing up all over the place recently, especially Microsoft AntiSpyware, which will bring these numbers down.

Now what does Open Source represent then? No extra people will work on software than already do now. There are already thousands of different Operating System Species, if you will, all that need different programs to use. They all fight each other for dominance over their own worthless market share, one day an operating system can be powerful, another it could not be supported anymore. Does your average Joe want that? One day his Operating system is being used by say ten thousand people, the next only five hundred, and the group of hippies who made it are making a different operating system and not supporting the old one. Instantaneously those five hundred people are in the firing line from hackers; because in this world, there is no Microsoft to hack, hackers will not go away without Microsoft, they will just hack something else. Perhaps Viruses will not spread so quickly in this world, but they will annihilate little groups of people quickly and consistantly, rather than a whole load of people every now and then, because the support that Microsoft gives everyone won?t be there, and only support from people, rather than a company.

Perhaps there is a risk from a Monoculture; but numbers and support keep the level of theoretical ?death? at a minimum. The advantages of being Monocultural far outweigh those deaths though; in an Open Source world the little people would not have an idea what to do. Without Windows, there would be tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Operating Systems out there. Everybody would be fighting continuously for customers, there would never be a leader, developers would be split into pockets that only develop for a specific line of Operating Systems. There would even be operating systems that seem perfectly already but have been made by the very people who right now make spyware! Operating Systems used by people who know nothing about computers that have Spyware or worse actually built in. It is fully possible for the sort of people who make Spyware now to do that, without Microsoft. From a computer shop in a small town, from home even using word of mouth. Sure; the source would be available, but who would know to look at it?

So on one hand we have compatibility and security we can all live with; on the other, we have confusion, security nobody really needs, and full chance of a whole town becoming the first spyware computer town.

I know what I would rather.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Soviet Union was kinda stable too...

"I know what I would rather."
Well, if you hardly have a choice like today, then it's good that you actually want the only thing that you can really get.

Immobilism can be considered stability. Heck, decay is too.

Is Open Source software at a comparable level to Windows today? I would say not yet, but they are catching up tremendously fast. In fact, they might have caught up before Vista comes out.

Competition is good. Even if you stick with Windows, just think that it really only gets better _because_ of competition. So, a level playing field which encourages competition _is_ good. Products will get users or will die. This is natural and not a proof that something is wrong with the market!!

[JHann]

Monoculture is not stability

How can you say that monocultuire is stable? Microsoft has changed their formats several times in the last 10 years. Where have you been all of this time? Obviously not working in or around IT when upgrades were needed just trying to keep up with the "defacto standard"....

[Malky_Amalk_Ney]

stability ?

(please excuse my english, it's not my native language)

Some ideas you exposed should be developped a little bit further :


--- "Humanity itself is a Monoculture"

"Monoculture" refers to "Culture" which is (from wikitionary) :

culture (plural cultures)
1. The arts, customs, and habits that characterize a particular society or nation.
2. The beliefs, values, behavior and material objects that constitute a people's way of life.
3. (biology) The process of growing a bacterial or other biological entity in an artificial medium.
4. (anthropology) Any knowledge passed from one generation to the next, not necessarily with respect to human beings.

How do you link Humanity and the 3rd definition (the article was talking about computers and biology) ? i'm a bit curious about that (could you be an in-vitro grown computer scientist ? :) ).
Seriously, humanity is *not* a culture nor a monoculture.


--- Plug and play

There're plenty of people who call me to repair their software (mostly Windows of course), and quite a good share of those calls come from plug'n'play. If you unplug some USB hardware under Windows, and plug it back later, Windows sometimes has the bad habit of forgetting that he already knows this hardware (especially all-in-one printers) and ask for the driver again. Of course a simple Next-Next-Next-Next-Close click-sequence generally solves the damn problem, but sadly a lot of people are unaware of that fact. And those people call me (60?/hour for such a service ain't nothing, and software vendors often forget that point).
Plug'n'play is a good thing *when it works*, and by the way my all-in-one HP inkhole works perfectly under Linux, even if i unplug-plug-unplug-... several times.


--- "There are already thousands of different Operating System Species"

Hummm ?? THOUSANDS ? i've missed a whole lot of them then. Dozens, maybe.


--- "and the group of hippies who made it are making a different operating system and not supporting the old one"

Unix exists since 1969, and Unix System V (the base of all Linux/Solaris/AIX/...) since 1983.
Some hippies can persist in their way, it seems.
If you want an history of all DOS/Windows big changes, prepare yourself to have a shock, because you seem to be quite unaware of what Microsoft did in the last 20 years.


--- "Operating Systems used by people who know nothing about computers that have Spyware or worse actually built in"

Never heard of regwizc.dll ? if not, Goggle a bit about that.


--- And last but not least : Stability

When the Massachusetts executive branch started to look at the file formats, it looked at it's own files and tried to open the oldest ones with recent software. It happened that Microsoft Word was unable to read some .doc files written some years ago.
Talk about stability...



Malky Amalk'Ney

[Lord Kalthorn]

Public Records

What is the OpenDocument, but a proprietory format? It is free, so it is cheaper. But you cannot edit it, you cannot say I would like it to do this, write it, and stuff it in. OpenDocument is just another format backed instead of by Microsoft, by some Hippies. The .dov Format is more compatible than any other Format in the world. If I wanted to read an OpenDocument File right now, I would have to download a Open-Source Word Processor. If I wanted to read a .doc File right now, even if I didn't have Office, I could. If I had Office 95, I could. If I had Works 95, I could. Indeed; even if I didn't have Works, which everybody has, I could read it. Because WordPad will read most if not all .doc Files.

Which in that case is more open? Which in any case is more open? The one that allows anybody to read it? Even people using a Linux Distribution can read a .dov File, using Open Office. Or the one that not everybody can read; because not everybody knows how to. They'll get their government file and think what? It is not opening! So they'll ask Microsoft probably, and it will in all take around 5 days and a lot of effort for them to open their file. Presuming then that they can use the worthless Office software that reads the OpenDocument; if they want to read it on another computer, they'll have to do the whole thing again!

All this does it put a useless program on the computers of people who want to read their documents. Nobody will use it after that, they will have to have it on only for these things. What is the point of that? To make an Anti-Microsoft point? To say thank you for all the amazing things you've done for me and computers in general but I'd rather go with this because it is lovely and hippie-fied. Disliking Microsoft is one thing; people seem to do it a lot for problems that are not of their making, and often of the making of the person who blames Microsoft for it in the first place! But to make governmental decisions based on the stupid idea that OpenDocument is good purely because it is free is just plain insane. It is a format made by people who have never made a format before, and are only making it because they don't like Microsoft. The people who make the Microsoft formats have had more than twenty years of experience making formats. They know how it is done, there is nothing wrong with the Microsoft document formats. They are well in excess of the power of the OpenDocument format and it should be obvious.

To even consider the idea is to be marked a fool; and will bring public record formats back to the technology the Microsoft format gave us five to eight years ago.

[farbuckle]

You have confused fact with fiction here.

Odd you should call ODF supporters "fools." At least they get their facts straight.

-- ODF is by definition not proprietary because anyone can understand how to produce documents for it. The specification is freely available. MSFT"s .doc _is_ proprietary because the details of how to produce and read documents made with it are MSFT's trade secrets that are known only to them.

-- The "hippies" to which you refer include Sun, Oracle and IBM, just for starters.

-- The _.doc_ format is more compatible with -- itself! Again, only MSFT products can take advantage of MSFT secrets. Your argument about compatibility is a lot like saying a Nokia wireless phone is incompatible with AT&T's 1960's telephone monopoly, so we're all better off with Ma Bell's rotary dial phones.

-- Who are these people "who have never made a format before?" Huge swaths of the industry are behind ODF and, again, include many of the biggest players. Oracle, IBM, Sun, Adobe -- yeah, I think they have produced a few file formats here and there.

Anyone can rant for hours about how ODF is "anti-Microsoft." Many people did similar things over the AT&T phone monopoly and the Standard Oil monopoly. The issues here have nothing to do with being "anti-Microsoft." They have everything to do with allowing the market to work and giving you and me something even more "wonderful" than Microsoft ever gave us: Competition for the consumer's dollar.

[Captain_Spock]

You appear to be very confused...

... and ill-informed in your attempt to describe OpenDocument as "just another format backed instead of by Microsoft" if by chance you have not read this before it is now included for your informed judgement for future discussions; please see attached link about historical developments activities on OpenDoc:

http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n13/opendoc.htm

After you have finished reading can you can come back and give "John Public" your honest opinion (as to why they should choose to be "locked-in" and pay much more) why you would want to be "locked-in" by newer standard (with limitations) that also cost "you" much more than the already freely available alternative Open Document Format Standards products.

[Steve_a]

Ahh Hippies

You sure its Hippies and not commies?

You have no idea how pathetic that sort of comment sounds.

[rkhalloran]

Any color as long as it's black...

>>But you cannot edit it, you cannot say I would like it to do this, write it, and stuff it in.

Funny, I see all these companies other than MS offering products for this format: IBM, Corel, and yes, OpenOffice.

>>If I wanted to read an OpenDocument File right now, I would have to download a Open-Source Word Processor.

Or go out and buy the IBM Workplace product, or wait until January and get the next WordPerfect release, and I'm sure other smaller companies are looking at this also. I'm sure the above aren't giving away their code for free, troll.

The point is a *public* entity is requiring *public* standards for their *public* documents. Vendors are free to support that standard or not, depending on whether they want to serve that market. Microsoft appears to be saying they know what this customer needs better than they do themselves. IBM, Corel, etc., are offering products to meet this customer's stated wishes; MS appears to be lobbying the state legislature to get the business by edict. Which is more open?

Apply this logic to electronic voting machines as well

Great article... the right idea with the simplest premise.

I'd love it if we would apply similar thinking to the EVM debacle.
It goes against the very spirit of voting to keep all the "internal
workings" of the machine that records and tabulates votes
proprietary and secret, and in the hands of a single company.

We can't trust our votes to machines that lock the public out of
insuring that the process is transparent, end-to-end.

Like the storage of the 'public record', which by definition
demands full, free, and unrestricted access, so should our
electronic voting machines provide the same consideration and
surety.

Open source software at the heart of all electronic voting
machines... that gets my vote!

[Steve_a]

Dont forget independent auditing

Voting systems that use physical media (eg paper) to record votes can be double checked by auditors if there is any question of actual votes counts. My ballot paper will show a cross, hole, tick etc. to indicate my vote - there is no question about which candidate got that vote.

Electronically that does not exist - I might have pressed the button, icon etc for Candidate C but if the program records that as Candidate D (either because its buggy or its been compromised) then there is no way of independent auditing/recounting at a later date.

OK so the situation with the Chads in Florida was a debacle but at least someone could do a physical recount/check. With computerised systems if the computer says Candidate D won then how can you prove otherwise if the manufacturers wont let anyone inspect the actual code/machines used.

If it's public record, everyone should be able to access

the information. Not everyone uses microsoft's software. I for one
do not and for me, it makes me a happier person. Now, if we could
just get all governments to develop for W3C standards for the
Internet, that would be even better.

[maddoghall]

Standards should be implementable by anyone

What amazes me is why Microsoft can not simply implement the Open Document Format as another of their many formats that they support. Why doesn't Microsoft join in the development of this open standard and give the governments of Massachusetts, Norway and others what they are asking for?

Open formats are not just about documenting a set of bits in a file. They are about meeting the needs of the various customers. Customers are asking for a documented, open format that entities can contribute to. They are asking for a complete, written standard that can allow them to preserve documents far into the future. They are asking for sample code so it is easy for manufacturers to implement successfully the standard. ODF gives all of this, which Microsoft only promises through .doc for the future.
Massachsetts was not saying that they would not buy Microsoft products in the future. They were saying that the Microsoft products should support a truly open standard, instead of one that is only designed and developed by one company.

Open Standards have been implemented successfully
for years, as is witnessed by Fortran, Cobol,
Posix, TCP/IP, WWW and other organizations.

Documents deserve the same consideration.

Jon "maddog" Hall
Linux International

[FirePig]

HTML anyone"

You said: "Massachsetts was not saying that they would not buy Microsoft products in the future. They were saying that the Microsoft products should support a truly open standard, instead of one that is only designed and developed by one company."

All MS docs can be saved as HTML. Is this not a truly open standard?

[Lord Kalthorn]

Standards are in the Eye of the Beholder

Why would they need to implement it? It is a worthless fad-Format. Why should Microsoft give whining babies who have yet to even do the damned change what they want just because they want to lower their budgets.

.doc has met the needs of all customers for years, decades indeed. How many customers really are asking for a documented 'open' format that entities can contribute to? Thirty? Maybe forty thousand people who know what that means, and another four hundred thousand who just don't want to pay for Office Software, as if they did in the first place for Office.

.doc has a complete and written standard that allows people to preserve documents far into the future. I openned a file from Office 3 yesterday that I had on a Floppy Disc I found. Still had my story on it, very impressive, it didn't look very good, but I openned it. I openned a file saved in Office 2003 in Office 97 on my downstairs computer - I do that a lot. Not being able to see some of that written standard does not inhibit people from being capable of using the files decades into the future, and from at least eight years into the past if not longer. If I had Office 95 I'd try - but nobody does!

.doc has a system for sample code if manufacturers want to get hold of it. Anybody can get it on MSDN along with tutorials, videos, and all manner of other resources. Why, however, a Format needs manufacturers to be able to implement it is confusing thought to say the least; you implement it by saving it and opening it, it is a Document, not an Operating System. And that is the delight of .doc. It is not a chore; anybody can open it, anybody can edit it, sure if you want the latest tools to do so it will cost you say... £10 for Works, or £200 for Office. OpenDocument is a chore, nobody can open the bloody things without, if on Dial-up, a day of solid downloading.

What is the difference between being developed by one group of knowledgeable people who know things about Documents all from different companies, and being developed by another group of knowledgeable people who know things about Documents all from one company? There will be no more people on either, no more ability on either, it is exactly the same situation.

And look where that has got us with HTML; a language so completely stuffed up with trying to be backward compatible to a level nobody still uses except those in W3C, where they still design websites like it is the Stone Age. It is pieced together like that and it is dreadful to say the least. It still does the job beacuse of some fantastically talented people who piece it together. Flash for instance, is a sign of a proprietary technology that if not limited by HTML itself, and Macromedia, could be fantastic.

[robertcampbell2]

Not Quite

"OpenDocument Format, unlike Microsoft Word's .doc, is a way to save electronic documents that anyone can read."

Not quite.
Theres a lot more too it. Going to ODF leaves out the vast majority of the disabled. And though many disability groups have pointed this out, it has been pretty much ignored by the state and the news media. This only furthers the suspicion that this is simply more Open Source antics designed to mess with Microsoft.
-----
"OpenDocument Format, unlike Microsoft Word's .doc, is a way to save electronic documents that anyone can read."

Note a show stopper:
Save the doc as text, xml, rtf, html or use the "other" non standard standard the state is suggesting; PDF. The state has choices as well.
-----

"Do we say that Microsoft is the only interpreter of a public record? That everyone has to buy Microsoft Word to read the documents their taxes paid for?"

Nope, we don't:
And you don't have to use Word to create them either. Don't use MS Office, use Wordperfect, use Open Office, use Use the free viewers available for Office documents use any number of "free" word processors.
Note that Wordperfect has stated that it will be able to output to ODF, but it doesn't say when or if it will change the default extension.

And of course, MS will end up with a "standard" through ECMA. This will never please the MS haters, but it will do for the rest of us.

[Captain_Spock]

I believe you are missing...

... the the very important point of "c-o-n-t-e-n-t i-n-t-e-r-o-p-e-r-a-b-i-l-i-t-y" on which to this day Microsoft has not made its position very clear. Since as stated; and, "By decision of the European Parliament and Council, The IDA Programme was set up in order to encourage information content interoperability through the promotion of trans-European telematic networks between Administrations, Institutions and Agencies."; please see link:

http://wiki.ffii.org/OpenDocIda04

[openMN]

STOP USING AS HUMAN SHIELDS!

Your generalizations regarding people with disabilities (PWDs) as having serious reservations regarding ODF is to use them like a shield for your factless assertions.

[openMN]

STOP USING THE DISABLED AS A SHIELD!

Your generalizations regarding people with disabilities as having grave concerns regarding ODF is to use them like a human shield for your own personal opinions.

When you tacitly marginalize them and exclude their realities from meaningful discussion, as you have, we all suffer and quickly find ourselves in a place where an equally viable alternative is to both ignore and loath alternative perspectives.

To wit: there is absolutely no consensus whatsoever regarding ODF and the disabled. And to assert that there is is utter balderdash.

You do them, the discussion, and the hope for a society that values input from all quarters a very serious harm.

I?m reminded of a photo that appeared in the last year of a Palestinian father attempting to shield his son from a hail of bullets. Despite his efforts, a bullet passed through him and killed the boy.

You, sir, appear to be backwards in your understanding and denigrate those in the struggle for a more inclusive world.

[FirePig]

Monoculture = One de facto standard

After reading this article, I feel as if the author began with the premise that a Microsoft monoculture is a bad idea and then created arguments to justify his premise.

My counter argument is that what we have now is a de facto international standard in word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. I can receive a document from Russia, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Israel, China, Saudi, Thailand, and almost anywhere else. When I open the document in Word (Excel, Power Point, etc), all of the native text displays and prints properly.

I remember the early days of DOS PCs when we had word processing documents in Word Star, Word Perfect and several other word processing programs. Then there were incompatible Apple word processing programs. I finally bought a program to translate my bosses documents from a word processing program that he used. This was all in English. Converting to other languages, particularly CJK, required other programs. This era was the electronic version of the Tower of Babel.

The MS monoculture brought this to an end. Now we have international and cross platform document portability. Why risk going backwards?

If someone wants to use a non MS format, there is already PDF. The reader is a free download. Anyone can read it and Adobe has made it internationally functional. If this is what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts wants, then they should just say that all documents should be PDF. To do otherwise risks the creation of another standard format which might not be as compatible as either PDF or the MS document formats.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

monoculture = death of choice

As simple as that. Once you have no choice anymore, the market freezes. Until MS can move us to a subscription format, then we will still see progresse as they compete with their older software.
As soon as they can move to "rent your software", then you can kiss goodbye to upgrades or progress or whatever.

[Mendz]

Monoculture is not applicable here...

I do not agree with the author comparing the software market to an eco-bio concept such as monoculture. Simply put, it is not applicable.

Near the start of his article, he states a definition showing how bad monoculture is in general. He then uses Microsoft's Word as an example. Looks good so far. But then, reviewing his article further, he eventually developed to suggesting a monoculture with OpenDocument (or anything other than with Microsoft's).

A very biased and very confused mind I'd say...

[Steve_a]

But you cant be sure..

What if the person who wrote the document wrote it in say office 95? Sure you can read it now.. but could you in say 2 years.

What happens if YOU are on Office 95 and someone sends you a document from Office 2003 or, in 18 months time sends you one from Office 12. Can you open it... NO you can't.

Now take that forward 20 years (or look back and ask if Office 2003 can open documents produced in Word 1 or Word 2).... I think you may have a problem.

The problem is that within the "Monoculture" that is the MS environment there are, in fact, different species: Each version of office that produces incompatable versions of files is a different species - unable to "breed" with the other species. Its like Cro-Magnon Man and HomoSapiens - similar but different.

[Mendz]

Yeah right...

The author sees monoculture in Microsoft's market dominance. But he eventually turns blind to see that OpenDocument may reach its own monoculture status if given the chance.

The author contradicts himself in justifying how bad Microsoft's monoculture is and then later suggesting that an OpenDocument monoculture is the way to go.

A very biased article that doesn't hold itself strong enough from beginning to end.

[Captain_Spock]

What does monoculture has to do with standards anyway!

In your post you said "The author sees monoculture in Microsoft's market dominance. But he eventually turns blind to see that OpenDocument may reach its own monoculture status if given the chance"... Does this statement address the question with regards to "content interoperability" that was adequately addressed by the OASIS OpenDocument Format Standards Group and other international bodies such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

[rkhalloran]

Yes it *is* right...

The fact that the *document* format is interoperable doesn't mean the *applications* are all the same. This should prevent the problems with macro-viruses since the various apps (IBM, Corel, OO.org) will be working from different codebases.