Amateur Megalomania

Todd and I had a discussion about the vulnerability of Microsoft products to viral attack.  A recent announcement about a Trojan that impacts MS Word led me to this article.

There’s a lot in the article.  But, I keyed in on the part that agrees with Todd’s observation that the likelihood of viral attack is directly proportional to the size of a product’s market share.  Apparently noted security expert Dan Geer agrees with him.  Geer also suggests a solution.

As Geer has pointed out, the greater the market share of a given vendor, the more that vendor’s products attract hackers, and therefore, the more its customers are at risk. With ODF, in contrast, there are already four main product choices, as well as several others available or in process. Unless a hacker could find a vulnerability at the standardized level, which is quite unlikely, the risk would automatically be dramatically reduced for any individual user, even if the total market share of ODF-compliant products were to become the same size as that enjoyed by Microsoft Office today.

Clearly Geer is plugging ODF.  I agree that the software industry should standardize on a single document format.  But, jeez, there are so many.  Honestly, I think it’s a pipe-dream.  But then, if there are several open standards, perhaps that suits the purpose as well.  No single standard has significant market share.  So, will there be a future where you can buy or download any word processor and it saves in any of five or six different formats that aren’t associated with any single vendor?  I doubt it.

Maybe we should go back to using text files.

Filed under: IMO