Today I wrote a review of Code Swaraj: Field Notes from the Standards Satyagraha by Carl Malamud and Sam Pitroda:
Here’s a snip:
And then there’s Carl and his colleagues, lecturing across India. They just want to publish standards. And they understand solidarity.
When a fire in a Russian shopping mall kills 64 people because of safety violations, and the people of Russia resist the corruption and indifference of their executive branch, we should take a page from the NRA book and be in league with those in the Siberian streets— see their fight as ours.. But we are not in communion with them. We are separate, and weaker for it.
When hundreds of workers in Bangladesh perish in the collapse of their factory because the building itself lacked integrity, we can see why wrongdoers fight so hard against the publication of standards.
So here is a blueprint for workers. Set aside the ultimately useless fact-checking and emotional tsk-tsking and broken retinas from endless eyerolls. In an era where the most outrageous things keep happening, the approach long adopted by Malamud is the next right thing. The simplest expression of integrity is a building block. By publishing required widths of gypsum, we build trust and accountability. This is how we build.