Let all codes contend

A world opened up by communications cannot remain closed up in a feudal vision of property,8221; said pop-star and politician Gilberto Gil. As Brazil8217;s culture minister, Gil has been instrumental in taking the country towards the free and open source software FOSS model that Kerala is now championing. Kerala became the first Indian state to switch public computing to Linux, and abandon proprietary platforms. Compared to software that you have to buy at a hefty price or get from the underground market, Linux is not controlled by any company. It is a free operating system that lets you adapt it to your own needs 8212; an ongoing collaborative effort of thousands of coders interacting over the Internet. No one owns it, and everyone is free to use, share and modify this software.

The free software movement, as envisioned by the sainted Richard Stallman, is about freedom; it is not just about software but a way of life that prizes cooperation and access. Along the way, parts of the movement mutated and split into the cannier open source movement, which is less about the ethical superiority of such 8216;copyleft8217; and sharing than about the robustness and design superiority of software that an entire community can scrutinise and improve. And taken together, FOSS models have been a runaway success, and Linux is the kernel of it all.

Linux evangelism is not confined to the loony left or the libertarian right. It makes practical sense in terms of cost and hardiness. For governments, this move is a no-brainer 8212; countries like Brazil and Mexico saved millions of dollars when they implemented Linux in schools and colleges, instead of forking out that money for a proprietary system. What is more, Linux allows the interface to be infinitely localised and moulded to individual needs, which means that markets too measly for, say, Microsoft8217;s attention can now be served. If Linux were implemented nationally, language barriers would no longer leave all too many Indians out of the information revolution. This time, Kerala is on the right side of history.