How do you architect freedom and architect a system that enhances or enables freedom?

Conventional software architecture over the past 35 years has not enabled us to create sustainable, extensible applications. Typically an application over 5 years old becomes a "legacy" application, difficult to maintain and change.

Gall suggests that what is amazing about the Open Source community is the freedom to change the software to make it fit what you want it to do. But for this to happen you need a free open community architecture.

The internet protocols are an example of such an open architecture. While the basic structure has remained unchanged for 30 years, they have been extended and adapted, allowing such new technologies as the web, email and VoIP.

Gall argues that an "Internet Architecture" is the best way to sustain a freedom to change allowing decentralized innovation and extensibility. A General Internet Architecture has several key principles, not least of which is that it must be simple, consisting of 3 key standards: an identifier, a format and a protocol. There are several examples of these 3 standards in practice.

1. The IP Protocol itself
   Consisting of the IP address, the IP packet structure, and the IP protocol
   
   
2. Email
   The @ sign, the internet message format RFC, and SMTP
   
   
3. The Web
   The URL, HTML/MIME, and the http protocol

In the physical world also we see examples of an Internet Architecture, such as with international containerized shipping where the shipping container ID, the "20 ton packet" and the port handling protocols map to the 3 key simple standards.