I suppose this is a bit of a stretch, but I'd like to offer an analogy of sorts to explain why net neutrality is so important. To do this, I'd like to demonstrate the successes of public vs. private internet service providers and public vs private operating systems. I believe that this comparison is instructive in that it will show that the public option is every bit as good as the private option. Where the private option often fails to fulfill, the public option is there to meet demand when the profit motive isn't enough motivation.

Decades ago, I took a computer science class to learn about <a href="https://www.linuxfoundation.org/>Linux. I learned how to work in a command line that ran on another operating system called Linux. I learned some simple scripting in Bash. I learned how to use the vi text editor. I learned the history of Linux and where it came from, and that was a my very brief introduction to Linux.

I was interested in Linux for several reasons. It was open source, meaning that if you got a copy of the operating system, you could get a copy of the source code for that operating system. I learned about the GPL license and how it worked. In very simple terms, if you modify the source code you received from someone else, and distribute binary files based on your modified source code, you must include access to the modified source code with the binaries. I found this one reason alone, compelling.

Source code is the human readable code, the programming language that humans use to write computer programs. Humans will run the source code through a compiler, a program designed to strip out the comments in the source code, and compile what remains into machine code, code that the processor understands. By the way, programmers use comments in source code to describe what a section of code does. Open source software gives you access to those comments to understand how the program works.

The GPL is designed to accumulate knowledge and requires sharing of that knowledge to use it. I like to think of the Linux kernel as one of the greatest collections of programming knowledge ever assembled in one nifty tar package.

Linux is similar to UNIX and is just one more iteration of UNIX. There is another version of *NIX as we like to say, and that is called BSD, also known as Berkeley Systems Development. BSD also has it's own license and, depending on who you talk to, that license does not require sharing of source code with modified binaries. Even though BSD is much older than Linux, it is not nearly as popular as Linux for one simple reason: developers see that their efforts come back to them tenfold compared to BSD because code is consistently shared on Linux where it is not on BSD.

What we get from Linux then, is a vendor neutral operating system. If you know the C or C++ programming language, you can write native software that runs on top of Linux. Now, for the most part and depending on the license you use for distribution, you are not required to share your source code for your own program, but you can be sure that your program will run the way you expected because you can look at the source code of Linux. If you know how Linux works, then writing a program to run on Linux becomes easier than say, writing a program for Windows.

Windows is distributed with a private license, the source code is private, and only Microsoft knows how Windows truly works. All you get is a binary file with no source code. You could decompile the binary files that Windows is made of, but you wouldn't get the comments in the code and you'd violate the software license.

If you write a program to run on Windows and it fails, then you would need to check if your bug is in the code, then the compiler (a program that turns human readable source code into machine language or binary code), and then see how the program interacts with the Windows application programming interface, the API.

Microsoft is famous for its gigantic API. And only Microsoft knows everything about the Windows API, well, at least one would hope. Some of you may remember a company called Netscape. They made their own web browser, Netscape Navigator, the first commercial web browser I had ever heard of, and I bought a copy of it myself when it came out.

The management of Microsoft saw an existential threat for Windows in Netscape Navigator. Microsoft then embarked on a course to hobble Netscape Navigator by playing bait and switch with the API. One day, the part of the Windows API that was used by Netscape was there, and then it wasn't. Or if it was, it wouldn't work properly, and Microsoft was supremely reluctant to share the bits needed by Netscape to compete with Microsoft's own browser, Internet Explorer.

This behavior resulted in numerous lawsuits and at least one Supreme Court case, not just with Netscape, but also with Novell and their their WordPerfect office suite, and numerous other companies seeking antitrust relief from the dominant desktop operating system. Microsoft had a monopoly and they weren't going to let it go. If you're using Firefox, you're using code that came from Netscape after Netscape made their code open source. Isn't that nice?

Then along came Linux, a free and open source *NIX system. Microsoft responded to the threat of Linux. They called Linux a virus. They used proxies to sue over Linux. They threatened Linux users with patent lawsuits, either directly or by proxy. But to developers, it was becoming clear that if you wanted your programs to work reliably, if you had access to the source code, you'd have a better chance of getting it to run on Linux, and you wouldn't have to deal with a psychotic and paranoid operating system vendor.

The open source spirit of Linux has created an operating system that is dominant worldwide. From servers to phones, to routers, to TVs, we can find Linux running just about anywhere we care to look.

I see the same thing happening with internet access. On the one hand, we have the mighty ISPs like Comcast, Time-Warner, ATT (I'd use the ampersand, but everywhere I go, it's borked by the blogging site), Charter Communications, Verizon, and Centurylink. They have scored an apparent victory with the recent decision by the Federal Communications Commission to repeal net neutrality.

On the other hand, we have community broadband. More than 500 jurisdictions - towns, cities, and counties - have built public infrastructure for transporting data to and from the homes and businesses they serve, to and from the internet. There is only one goal of community broadband: to serve their community. They are not worried about competing information services because they don't compete with information services. They are a common carrier under Title II of the Communications Act and are not shy to admit it. They believe in net neutrality.

These 500 cities and counties built their networks after years, even decades of pleading with the major ISPs to bring broadband to where they live. They begged the incumbent ISPs to provide them with a network that would bring people to their towns, and with them, new businesses and jobs. That network, like the roads, electric power, water, and rivers, would increase tax revenue with commerce and higher property values.

Major ISPs didn't see the value in building their networks in small podunk towns. So those towns and cities held meetings. They wrote plans for their own networks. They sold bonds to build their own networks. And when they built their networks, the people came for a network that would just work. They came for something better than the incumbent ISPs were willing to offer. They came for the $60 Gig connections up and down in Sandy, Oregon. They came for that 10 Gig connection on Chattanooga, Tennessee. They were fleeing the small towns that did not that have a network, they were fleeing the places that the incumbent ISPs ignored.

Like Microsoft, the incumbent ISPs threatened legal action. They said that government had no business selling a luxury like internet access. They said that it was too risky, that community broadband would fail and would leave taxpayers on the hook for the bonds sold to build those networks. But more than a decade into this experiment, a survey of those towns show that the community networks paid for themselves within years of start.

The Incumbent ISPs then took their case for hegemony to the statehouse wherever there was a threat of community broadband. They worked with The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to write legislation that would hobble if not eradicate the nuisance of community broadband. That model legislation was passed in 21 states and counting. They ran smear campaigns against community broadband initiatives. They lobbied hard against community broadband because they knew they could not compete against government. But the fact is, the big incumbent ISPs refused to even try to compete, even among themselves.

Where private ISPs are motivated by profit, they have a pecuniary incentive to block, or slow down competing services. They have an incentive to extract maximum value for popular services like Netflix (anyone who has seen the fights over peering with Netflix will know what I mean). They have an incentive to delay network upgrades to please their shareholders with dividends. They have an incentive to stick with big cities and shut out the little guys. They can cross-subsidize their networks to defeat new competition by cutting prices where new competition shows up and raising prices where there is no competition.

Community broadband has none of these incentives. They are only concerned with one thing: serving their community. They are accountable to their community because they are owned by the public. They have open meetings where they are held accountable to the public. They have every incentive to provide the best possible service because community broadband executives and employees will see the people they serve when they go shopping, to church, or to the park. They may be confronted with criticism or a compliment. But they will know the people they serve, one way or another.

Not only is community broadband network neutral, community broadband is vendor neutral. Community broadband doesn't compete against their customers the way private broadband does. This neutrality, this dedication to a single purpose, to serve customers with the best possible internet access service, is what makes community broadband so desirable.

Linux, the open source operating system, started from humble beginnings and grew to be a world class, even carrier grade operating system. Linux grew to such stature due to the dedication of the people who contributed to it, independent of vendors and nations. This vendor neutrality is what makes Linux so popular, and allows us to re-purpose it as needed, where needed.

Community broadband is still in it's early days and has suffered many insults from private broadband. Although a rarity now, the community broadband movement is growing steadily. Like Linux was in the early days, it was not the norm, but now it is everywhere. With the apparent repeal of net neutrality, the FCC is setting the stage for long term growth of community broadband. With continued assaults on internet freedom, we will be left with only one reliable choice for internet access: community broadband.