8 ms·

What's wrong with having to pay for software? Or learning to accept that some software is proprietary? Or even with learning to use the right tool for the job,

What's wrong with having to pay for software? Or learning to accept that some software is proprietary? Or even with learning to use the right tool for the job, even if that "right tool" may sometimes come at a cost? Students are required to pay for their education at MIT. Were the costs of this course offset with the costs of the non-free software used in an otherwise "standard course"? People put immense effort into developing software. Is asking for compensation for one's time and effort somehow wrong? And in many cases, proprietary/commercial software really does outperform the equivalent FOSS/Libre solution. Why are we teaching people to reach out for the suboptimal tools in these situations?

chottocharaii 6y ago
No one objects to people being paid to make software. What if people were paid through public grants, or paid well through the welfare state; instead of through the legal scarcity provided by intellectual property?
- aww_dang 6y ago
  Or even voluntary contributions of time or money? Typically those who utilize open software for commercial ends contribute code. Opensource contributors are hired by companies using their software.
logane 6y ago
Sussman means free as in freedom, not free as in beer :) (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)
- md5person 6y ago
  > "Sussman means free as in freedom, not free as in beer :) (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)" Sure, but conveniently enough, the software listed in the parent article [0] all happens to be "free as in beer". What examples of "free as in freedom, but we had to pay for it before we could use it" software was used during the course? [0] https://www.gnu.org/education/teaching-my-mit-classes-with-only-free-libre-software.html https://www.gnu.org/education/teaching-my-mit-classes-with-o...
  - gspr 6y ago
    I'm struggling to understand your reasoning. If the author had said "I only drink fair-trade coffee" would you also object if it happens to be the case that the fair-trade coffee is the cheapest type at his local supermarket?
    - md5person 6y ago
      This isn't an accurate analogy, is it? We're discussing an educational institution with power and authority (MIT), which promotes drinking "free coffee", whilst simultaneously portraying it as somehow morally superior to "coffee one has to pay for" to consume. Growing and selling coffee takes time, labour and effort - yet none of that is being reflected or accounted for when we choose to not pay for the coffee we consume. Is this a sustainable approach? Does it promote "choosing the right tool for the job", or does it promote blind idealism ("free is better")? And why does a university, which takes exorbitant tuition fees, not prioritize the best software for the course (over the one that's merely free)?
      - fsflover 6y ago
        >whilst simultaneously portraying it as somehow morally superior Free software is morally superior, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor.... It provides specific rights to the user so that the user is in control of their computing and not the developers. > Is this a sustainable approach? Does it promote "choosing the right tool for the job", or does it promote blind idealism ("free is better")? How to decide what is "blind idealism" and what is "normal idealism"?
      - berkes 6y ago
        You seem to fail to grasp the difference between "free as in beer" (gratis) and "free as in freedom" (libre). Your coffee-response is all wrong: this is not about "free" coffee, about (not) having to pay for coffee, but about a moral stance on coffee: e.g. demanding the cafetaria only serves Fair Trade coffee, regardless of the price. This is not about "having to pay for it" at all. The opposite really: running your own jitsi or BigBlueButton is probably more expensive than using the free tier of Teams, Zoom or Hangouts. I run a large-ish jitsi instance: approx €50/month just for the VPS, my hours probably add another €2000/month to that.
dependenttypes 6y ago
> And in many cases, proprietary/commercial software really does outperform the equivalent FOSS/Libre solution And in most cases, it does not. Why are we teaching people to reach out for the suboptimal tools in these situations?
- berkes 6y ago
  A large part here is the "sales". Commercial software, almost by definition, has a sales team that ensures their software is bought by universities, companies, governments etc. Non-commercial software does not have this in that sense. It may have advocates who, out of sheer enthousiasm, bring software into such universities, companies and governments, but hardly ever an actual sales. And since non-commercial software is largely FLOSS, whereas commercial software if most often proprietary, we see that, simply through sales, the proprietary alternatives are used far more often. Regardless of any technical merits. Technical superiority hardly "sells" software, sales teams do that. Unfortunately, I might add.
m463 6y ago
I actually think that free software is an excellent choice for a classroom because not only can the students examine how everything works, they can take a copy home with them and modify it. I wish I had had that opportunity when I studied computer science, because my tools were treated as a sort of "magical black box" with no visibility. The programs we wrote in class were toy programs, and there was no sort of "reality check" for how our editor or compiler or any other tool was actually written.
Symbiote 6y ago
The second of the "four freedoms" of free software is > The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. That is particularly important for students of computer science -- what better way to see how all kinds of software works than by reading and modifying its source code? I'm surprised if a "standard course" doesn't mostly use free software. Mine certainly did, I remember only a single module where we used a commercial software package (something for hardware simulation). I've never felt that this has limited me in any way. One module had us modifying the Linux kernel.
- barking 6y ago
  Who wrote the Four freedoms and how does he put food on the table?
  - fsflover 6y ago
    https://fsf.org https://fsf.org
    - barking 6y ago
      If you're just some guy who writes and updates a piece of software for a living, what do you do then?
      - fsflover 6y ago
        This is not a trivial question, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-source_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-sourc...
      - vertex-four 6y ago
        You find people willing to pay for your work, not for a license. If your ongoing work is not worth anything, why should you be paid extra for work you did in the past?
        6y ago
aww_dang 6y ago
Non sequitur You're assuming a generalization which is not present in the article. People can disagree on the merits of paid software and still agree that teaching using open solutions is has benefits. One does not necessarily follow the other.

chottocharaii 6y ago

No one objects to people being paid to make software. What if people were paid through public grants, or paid well through the welfare state; instead of through the legal scarcity provided by intellectual property?

aww_dang 6y ago
Or even voluntary contributions of time or money? Typically those who utilize open software for commercial ends contribute code. Opensource contributors are hired by companies using their software.

logane 6y ago

Sussman means free as in freedom, not free as in beer :) (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)

md5person 6y ago
> "Sussman means free as in freedom, not free as in beer :) (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)" Sure, but conveniently enough, the software listed in the parent article [0] all happens to be "free as in beer". What examples of "free as in freedom, but we had to pay for it before we could use it" software was used during the course? [0] https://www.gnu.org/education/teaching-my-mit-classes-with-only-free-libre-software.html https://www.gnu.org/education/teaching-my-mit-classes-with-o...
- gspr 6y ago
  I'm struggling to understand your reasoning. If the author had said "I only drink fair-trade coffee" would you also object if it happens to be the case that the fair-trade coffee is the cheapest type at his local supermarket?
  - md5person 6y ago
    This isn't an accurate analogy, is it? We're discussing an educational institution with power and authority (MIT), which promotes drinking "free coffee", whilst simultaneously portraying it as somehow morally superior to "coffee one has to pay for" to consume. Growing and selling coffee takes time, labour and effort - yet none of that is being reflected or accounted for when we choose to not pay for the coffee we consume. Is this a sustainable approach? Does it promote "choosing the right tool for the job", or does it promote blind idealism ("free is better")? And why does a university, which takes exorbitant tuition fees, not prioritize the best software for the course (over the one that's merely free)?
    - fsflover 6y ago
      >whilst simultaneously portraying it as somehow morally superior Free software is morally superior, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor.... It provides specific rights to the user so that the user is in control of their computing and not the developers. > Is this a sustainable approach? Does it promote "choosing the right tool for the job", or does it promote blind idealism ("free is better")? How to decide what is "blind idealism" and what is "normal idealism"?
    - berkes 6y ago
      You seem to fail to grasp the difference between "free as in beer" (gratis) and "free as in freedom" (libre). Your coffee-response is all wrong: this is not about "free" coffee, about (not) having to pay for coffee, but about a moral stance on coffee: e.g. demanding the cafetaria only serves Fair Trade coffee, regardless of the price. This is not about "having to pay for it" at all. The opposite really: running your own jitsi or BigBlueButton is probably more expensive than using the free tier of Teams, Zoom or Hangouts. I run a large-ish jitsi instance: approx €50/month just for the VPS, my hours probably add another €2000/month to that.

dependenttypes 6y ago

> And in many cases, proprietary/commercial software really does outperform the equivalent FOSS/Libre solution And in most cases, it does not. Why are we teaching people to reach out for the suboptimal tools in these situations?

berkes 6y ago
A large part here is the "sales". Commercial software, almost by definition, has a sales team that ensures their software is bought by universities, companies, governments etc. Non-commercial software does not have this in that sense. It may have advocates who, out of sheer enthousiasm, bring software into such universities, companies and governments, but hardly ever an actual sales. And since non-commercial software is largely FLOSS, whereas commercial software if most often proprietary, we see that, simply through sales, the proprietary alternatives are used far more often. Regardless of any technical merits. Technical superiority hardly "sells" software, sales teams do that. Unfortunately, I might add.

m463 6y ago

I actually think that free software is an excellent choice for a classroom because not only can the students examine how everything works, they can take a copy home with them and modify it. I wish I had had that opportunity when I studied computer science, because my tools were treated as a sort of "magical black box" with no visibility. The programs we wrote in class were toy programs, and there was no sort of "reality check" for how our editor or compiler or any other tool was actually written.

Symbiote 6y ago

The second of the "four freedoms" of free software is > The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. That is particularly important for students of computer science -- what better way to see how all kinds of software works than by reading and modifying its source code? I'm surprised if a "standard course" doesn't mostly use free software. Mine certainly did, I remember only a single module where we used a commercial software package (something for hardware simulation). I've never felt that this has limited me in any way. One module had us modifying the Linux kernel.

barking 6y ago
Who wrote the Four freedoms and how does he put food on the table?
- fsflover 6y ago
  https://fsf.org https://fsf.org
  - barking 6y ago
    If you're just some guy who writes and updates a piece of software for a living, what do you do then?
    - fsflover 6y ago
      This is not a trivial question, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-source_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-sourc...
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      You find people willing to pay for your work, not for a license. If your ongoing work is not worth anything, why should you be paid extra for work you did in the past?
      - 6y ago

aww_dang 6y ago

Non sequitur You're assuming a generalization which is not present in the article. People can disagree on the merits of paid software and still agree that teaching using open solutions is has benefits. One does not necessarily follow the other.