Dan Geer has an editorial "Massachusetss Assaults Monoculture" on CNet on Massachusetts' move to the OpenDocument format:
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 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.
This relates directly to yeserday's post on survivability - diversity is a key factor in ensuring survivability.
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