The Operating System Monoculture dilemma
It is often fun to speculate and point at problems … the solutions, however, do not always come easy. This article is about the issues surrounding a paper written about the “Windows Monoculture” … proposing that so many people are running Microsoft Windows products that a single major flaw could be discovered that causes massive damage (to the entire human race?) when millions of computers are effected.

There are a number of “flaws” with this model, although it points at some potential issues to be learned from. One thing is that no real solution is outlined … and the “obvious” solution is that the world ought to be running on tens or hundreds of different operating systems to solve this dilemma.

Replacing one ‘monoculture’ with a different ‘monoculture’ is not a solution. So having GNU/Linux dominate the earth would simply spawn a new group of “anti-GNU/Linux” people who would call that wrong, and create their alternative. There are only two real ways out … to create something within the technologic substrate that is superior to what is possible in the biologic substrate … or to have a large and diverse number of operating systems.

I actually think that what we are going to find is that the technologic substrate will allow for the emergence of entities that far exceed the capabilities of the biological world that we are a part of.

Warning: Microsoft ‘Monoculture’. A security expert warns Microsoft’s dominance of software is a set-up for global disaster — and promptly loses his job. His comparison is to biology, where species with little genetic variation are vulnerable to catastrophic epidemics. [Wired News]