Page:Code Swaraj - Carl Malamud - Sam Pitroda.djvu/158

Code Swaraj A satyagraha requires intense preparation, the people must educate themselves about the issues. A satyagraha requires principle: before Gandhi marched to the sea, he notified the Viceroy of his intent. A satyagraha must stay focused: once the first aim is achieved, one does not extend it. One declares victory, them moves on to something else. Most importantly, the satyagraha campaign must be in the context of an larger goal, such as swaraj.

These lessons went from Gandhi to South Africa and to India. These lessons went from Gandhi to Mandela and Kenyatta and Nkrumah and spread to all of Africa. These lessons went from Gandhi to King and the fight for racial justice in America. These lessons changed the world.

Code Swaraj As A Symbol And Goal

Code swaraj to me means that our rulebooks should be open. The Internet has changed the world, and it changed the world because of open source software and open protocols. Everybody knows how the Internet works if they take time to read the protocol specs, which are available for all to read.

The Internet was not a foregone conclusion. When I started working on the Internet in the 1980s, there were several networks. One was being developed by the powers-that-be under the leadership of the International Organization for Standardization and with support from big corporate and government players. It was called Open Systems Interconnection (OSI), and the model they adopted was the same as we still see being used by standards bodies today. The protocol specifications were developed in a tightly controlled process and the resulting documents were extremely expensive to purchase and could not be copied freely without a license from a private party.

I was writing professional reference books about computer networks during that time, and had to buy lots of those “OSI” documents. I was also writing columns for computer trade magazines and a lot of my columns were about how the high price of standards and the closed process was killing the potential of this new technology.

Meanwhile, an ad hoc group of engineers had formed the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The group was self-organized, and all the protocols were open and freely available. More importantly, it was based on a principle of “working code.” That meant you couldn’t show up at a committee meeting to standardize some aspects of Internet operation, say for example the format of email headers, without having implemented your proposal. The Internet