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Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software (2014)

• brighton36 6y ago
  This assumes we know what schools are for. :(
  • MiscIdeaMaker99 6y ago
    Would you please elaborate?
    • brighton36 6y ago
      I guess that was a bit terse. NPR did a series called 'nice white parents' that went over some of these issues. But, the central question is basically "what is the goal here" . Do kids belong to the state, and the state decides what's best? (and what's involved there) Do kids belong to the parents, and parents decide what's best? What is education? Do we want them job ready? What if these are zero sum games. etc.
  • jagged-chisel 6y ago
    I think this assumes we all agree on what schools are for, and that we agree they exist "to teach students to be citizens of a strong, capable, independent, cooperating and free society." I think many would agree with that purpose at face value, but aren't willing to empower schools to do anything beyond babysitting.
  • kwhitefoot 6y ago
    I wish I could give this a lot more than one upvote. Everyone seems to be taking it for granted that it is necessary that the students use some sort of software. In my opinion it is not the business of schools to teach the use of specific tools, that is what apprenticeships and further education are for. Schools should teach the fundamentals (what is called in the UK the three Rs, Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic) and extend this with critical reading and analysis, rhetoric, and statistics so that when the students leave school they can do more than read the words in a comic, so that they understand at least basic statistics so that they will not be bamboozled by advertisers and politicians. They should also know something about how and why their home country has the political structures that it has and how their country functions in an international context. Some schools used to be able to do this for at least some of their students. I know because fifty years ago I attended such schools and yet still had plenty of time to study other subjects, do physical education, and take part in many extra curricular activities. None of this needed computers although those of us who were interested did learn to program (from 1969 onwards). The same applies to university studies at undergraduate level. I really can't see that having a laptop and a copy of Microsoft Office would have made studying physics easier for me. I can see that some software might make it seem easier though.
• valuearb 6y ago
  Free software is immoral. It changes programming into slavery. See? I can make simplistic moral equivalencies just like Richard Stallmab.
  • fsflover 6y ago
    But do you have any reasoning with examples? Stallman does.
    • valuearb 6y ago
      Sure, developers deserve to get paid for their work. It’s fine if we collectively share efforts to build shared tools but it shouldn’t be made a legal requirement.
      • fsflover 6y ago
        No one suggests to stop paying for software development. A lot of people develop free software for money. See also: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html See also: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html "I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed."
        • valuearb 6y ago
          The title of his post is schools should exclusively use free software.
          • fsflover 6y ago
            And? Schools should obviously support the software developers for their work. But even if they won't, the kids will be using free software later in their businesses and the money for support will flow.
• awat 6y ago
  I’m quite involved in the Ed tech space and unfortunately it’s an environment where a lot of times it’s more expensive to be poor.
  • judge2020 6y ago
    That's true in general as almost all products have a flat cost rather than charging you a percentage of your income.
    • freedomben 6y ago
      It's deeper than that. Being poor often means you can't buy in quantity, and most things are cheaper in bulk. If you have to buy one can of soda for example, you're looking at $0.75 USD. If you can afford a little more, you can buy a 12-pack for $3.99 USD. Or look at buying a home. In Utah the mortgage on a house is typically much lower than the corresponding rent would be, plus you build equity. However if you don't have the down payment or the credit to buy, then you have to rent. Your rent will be say $1,500/mo where as the corresponding mortgage would have been $1,100. It actually costs more for your housing because you are poor. Whenever I say it's expensive to be poor, that's the kind of stuff I mean. Your options are just far more limited, in a way that makes it difficult to get a good deal.
      • pessimizer 6y ago
        So not only more expensive proportionally, but more expensive absolutely.
      • awat 6y ago
        Absolutely, referring to schools in Utah and this is exactly it. The buyer/user/student is penalized for the lack of upfront capital and generally the business model is more aggressive because they don’t have the ability to use capital to escape it.
  • jabroni_salad 6y ago
    One of my first jobs was for a k12 district of 4 schools. I was the sole sysadmin for around 1600 users and had to justify any spend to the school board and the PTO, so my decisions were usually based on 1) can I fit this into my very limited time and 2) can I get a grant or significant EDU discount for this. Usually only commercial stuff targeting EDU (like Microsoft at the time) was what I could get. It's no wonder Google has taken over. Single pane of glass for everything, almost fully automated, much more bulletproof than anything else available. I would have killed for that 15 years ago. Of course, at that time everything was in 'computer labs' and things werent really that bad since the machines were always available on wired connections. Doing a 1:1 deployment to that many people as a soloist with crappy mid-aughts wifi and windows XP would have been a completely different ballgame.
• December_Stars 6y ago
  Speaking as a student whose school primarily uses Google's suite (classroom, meet, etc..) but still has a few older solutions, some of which are free software, I can say that there's a common argument that schools should focus on pragmatism and working with what they have - the age-old argument that free software still is not accessible or easy to use. I don't beleive that this is still an issue. Out of my current teachers and teachers I've had in the past, almost all of them were vocal about not liking Classroom or just didn't use it. It is basically a small layer on top of Google Drive & Meet that does not integrate anything nearly well enough. Most of my teachers seem to prefer Canvas, a free software solution to this, because it has more features. My teachers primarily cited the integrated quiz/test system as its biggest draw when I asked. Classroom is also is very difficult for less-privileged students to use - speaking as someone who used to rely on a 4 GB of RAM netbook with a Pentium and was still using it for part of this quarantine, even with Linux things really get slow. This could primarily be attributed to relying on a lot of Google tabs at once (for Drive, forms for quizzes, etc) while Canvas I've never had to open more than a few maximum. My only other option is to buy a Chromebook and while my school can afford Chromebooks for every student, many students are relying on just using what they have. With that, I don't think that the proprietary software really has all too much of an advantage in terms of pragmatism (which imo is even more important in schools). I don't think the usual arguments against adoption of free software really seem to hold up, though I assume that cost might be an issue that I'm not aware of seeing my district is rather rich. I'd love to hear more teachers opinions on this. Hopefully this gave you an idea of how education tech is from a student user's endpoint.
  • api 6y ago
    A major problem isn’t at the user level but the admin level. Cloud SaaS means someone else installs and maintains the backend. Many school districts do not have the in house talent to do this, or what talent they do have is too busy putting out fires. Administrating systems is generally hell. They have to be kept updated, secured, etc. The rise of closed SaaS is in part to free people from the curse of IT and system administration. Can we make IT and admin easier? Yes, but nobody has done the work and it isn’t likely anyone will since there is no economic model.
• AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  It would be nice...but I just don't see it working in practice. Zoom was the best-positioned company in the world to handle the influx of remote meetings when the pandemic started, and even they buckled under the strain, at least initially. I can't imagine that Jitsi would be able to handle the load if all schools switched over to it tomorrow, without a couple billion dollars in additional funding.
  • MonadIsPronad 6y ago
    This note is perhaps conflating hardware with software. It sounds like a reasonable solution to me for each university or school to have some small server hardware running free software that supports their online needs.
    • larrywright 6y ago
      That’s a nice idea, but what happens when you have a situation like what happened earlier this year? Every school sent their kids home and they went fully remote. All of those software tools suddenly got a lot more use. If school districts were relying on self hosted solutions, they’d have all had to provision new hardware in a hurry. Hardware they likely don’t have budget for. The reality is that cloud based software makes a lot more sense.
• vxNsr 6y ago
  Free software isn’t really free, it requires a team of software developers to maintain the self hosted servers that it’s running on. School budgets are pretty stretched, if they can get away with free OneDrive or gDrive, and the associated cloud suite of software, that doesn’t mean they can drop in libre-office and whatever cloud software is free.
  • gr2zr4 6y ago
    Free as in freedom and not as in free beer
    • lovelyviking 6y ago
      Any idea why not to use 'freedom' term instead of 'free' and explaining it again and again. Freedom Software Foundation Freedom software etc ... What prevents renaming?
      • freedomben 6y ago
        Just speaking for myself, the bad grammar of "freedom software" kills it right away for me :-)
      • bregma 6y ago
        The word 'freedom' is itself highly politically charged in a certain very influential country. It has various context-dependent nuances best left undisturbed outside of targeted party-political discourse.
        • Qwertious 6y ago
          When we talk about free software, we're already explicitly invoking "free as in freedom" though. If you want to avoid the " freedom" rhetoric then you should talk about open-source instead.
      • Qwertious 6y ago
        I prefer "freedom-respecting software" myself. It parses better.
• wedowhatwedo 6y ago
  At my university, we are heavily dependent upon Microsoft. The reasoning is that it has more features than the open source equivalents. It was pointed out that the over $1 million a year given to Microsoft could be used to implement those features in the open source tools and it wouldn't take long to get there. That was in the 1990's. We now give Microsoft many more millions a year and have ever since.
  • api 6y ago
    Who would do that implementation? Who would manage it? Who would lead it?
    • fsflover 6y ago
      Anyone willing to get $1 million.
      • alistairSH 6y ago
        That doesn’t get you very far. Maybe a small team of developers for a year. But, maintenance and hosting cost more.
        • fsflover 6y ago
          Most of free software is supported gratis. You do not need full support, just specific things for your use case.
        • pessimizer 6y ago
          Anybody willing to get $1 million '90s dollars. They probably spend more now.
  • gr2zr4 6y ago
    And maybe you still don't know how many millions they give to the software houses to use their statistical packages :)
  • 6y ago
• gr2zr4 6y ago
  He is right and it's the very same reason why open-source and free-software should be used in scientific research.
  • ragnese 6y ago
    That's a whole other can of worms, too. How about reproducibility and transparency? How do I know the math is correct when I don't know what MATLAB/whatever is actually doing under the hood?
    • gr2zr4 6y ago
      Exactly! But, moreover: how can my research be reproducible if someone else can't afford to buy that specific software? Or if the software's version I used is outdated and the updated one does not read the old one's files?
• boogies 6y ago
  The FSF recently created a petition to promote free software in schools: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/sign-this-petition-for-freedom-in-the-classroom https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/sign-this-petition-for-f...
  • cbm-vic-20 6y ago
    "We'll get in touch with their administration on your behalf, and let them know that a global community of activists and everyday people alike have signed a statement in support of free software in education." Sure, but how does this solve the problems that schools have? The problems that are currently being solved well enough now by the likes of Google and Microsoft? If the FSF wants this to succeed, they need to demonstrate and convince school districts that Free Software can meet their needs with costs they can afford. It would help their position if they could show a school district that has successfully gone in this direction.
    • boogies 6y ago
      They do something somewhat along those lines https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-cases.html#content https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-cases.html#content https://www.gnu.org/education/successful-resistance-against-nonfree-software.html#content https://www.gnu.org/education/successful-resistance-against-.... But I think the FSF would rather focus on ideals, absolute purity, and technical stuff like LibreJS tagging than do marketing for the impure populist Ubuntus of the education world (like Canvas) that already have corporations to do that (like Instructure, kind of like Canvas’ Canonical).
• MonadIsPronad 6y ago
  Schools seem so fundamental to creating the fabric of society, to me. To have a school system under the contractual obligations of a company, whos common primary incentive is wholly financial, seems like a good way to weaken the mechanisms that produce a good, happy society. Free software does indeed seem like a good thing to require in our society-cornerstone systems: schools, hospitals, government systems etc.
  • clarkmoody 6y ago
    So we've had nationwide government schooling in the United States for a bit over a hundred years at this point. Would you say that those schools have created a "good, happy" fabric of society?
    • pessimizer 6y ago
      As compared to the time before free public education? As a black person I'll say that it's not great now, but definitely better than the 1920s for anyone in my family. As southern sharecroppers, we were pretty much serfs.
    • bena 6y ago
      This is a "It was cold today ergo global warming is a hoax" style of argument. Experiencing a a slight dip does not mean that the general trend has not been good. Or to put it in a way more people will understand: Society is going to moon, so buy the dip and hodl on.
  • HPsquared 6y ago
    The same would apply not only to software, but all copyrighted/patented objects. Surely you don't advocate forgoing those, so why is software different?
    • MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      Most of the arguments for Free Software do not apply to other copyrighted/patented objects, but it's still worth considering the analogy. Many of the books studied in schools are copyrighted and deny the freedom to distribute (Freedom 2), or to distribute modified versions (Freedom 3). Books aren't the same as software though. Unlike a book, software does stuff. It can act against your interests. There are many ways proprietary software can be harmful, [0] few of which apply to non-Free books. It's the same reason the FSF have a strong position that game engines should be Free Software, but they aren't too concerned if game assets (maps, textures, music, etc) are paywalled and non-Free. A texture can't do harm in the way executable code can (not counting malicious textures that exploit security vulnerabilities). (Incidentally this is the current licensing situation for DOOM and Quake. The engines are Free and Open Source Software, but the game assets are paywalled and non-Free.) Studying patented technologies might not always be a mistake, as it may represent the state of the art, and still be worth studying. I believe the NOTAR helicopter technology is patented, for instance, but it's still worth teaching to aeronautical engineering students. [1] Again, the issues there aren't the same as the issues with non-Free software. The issue of companies paying schools to teach their solutions, is a different matter. [0] https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary.en.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary.en.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOTAR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOTAR
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• dathanb82 6y ago
  This argument seems to rely heavily on the idea that non-free software is unethical. If you’re already bought into that idea, then clearly schools ought to only use free software. If you’ve not bought into it already, there’s nothing here that’s likely to change your mind.
  • fsflover 6y ago
    It's not just ethically wrong. There are also practical implications: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor...
    • dathanb82 6y ago
      Maybe so. I disagree with much of Stallman’s platform. But regardless of that, I was just observing that the arguments offered in the article in addition to the rest of the dialogue about free vs proprietary software are mostly based on the idea of a moral or ethical imperative behind free software, and relies on an existing body of work to make arguments about why that imperative might exist. Since the article doesn’t attempt to justify the existence of that imperative, it mostly serves as a statement of position, rather than an argument that’s likely to win anybody over who isn’t already on board with the idea.
• OneGuy123 6y ago
  > They are intensely curious to read the source code of the programs that they use every day. I can't remember ever wanting that. > Proprietary software rejects their thirst for knowledge: it says, “The knowledge you want is a secret—learning is forbidden!” I can't ever remember thinking that. > How do natural-born programmers learn to be good programmers? They need to read and understand real programs that people really use. Real program != well written program. This article makes so many statements in the form of "You must do X because of Y otherwise you are immoral" that if any of those would actually be true 99% of programmers today should not be able to exist by his logic.
  • MonadIsPronad 6y ago
    Anecdotally, I can certainly relate strongly to the quotes you pointed out.
  • fsflover 6y ago
    99% people do not want any of these. But it's the 1% who change the world.
  • II2II 6y ago
    > They are intensely curious to read the source code of the programs that they use every day. It's not quite the same thing, but I remember reading and modifying the source code of Applesoft BASIC games as well as trying to reverse engineer copy protection in the school's computer lab. The reality though is that open source software's main benefit to schools is the licensing model. Not only does the cost of the software actually being used add up, there are also licenses for the software to manage licenses. On top of that is the effort it takes to manage licenses, which ties into labour costs. Things have probably changed since I managed a school computer lab a decade back, but I did a test deployment of an all open source solution in an evening of my spare time. It took several months of evenings to build up a similar setup using commercial software. The major difference between the two were the hurdles created by commercial software licensing.
• dangus 6y ago
  Flawed from the first sentence, this article would have us all insist on free software in a Sith world of absolutes. Software is a tool like any other tool, and we all make trade-offs based on our priorities. ...except for the folks like Richard Stallman. They’re willing to suffer through bad solutions (or have the time and skills to write their own) just to maintain this ideological line in the sand. The thing is, people who have real jobs and aren’t just academics like Stallman have to get shit done. Sure, a lot of open source software is actually better than proprietary alternatives. a lot of open source software is an easy choice. I’d like to see Richard Stallman run a wedding photography business without touching proprietary software. Or a restaurant. Or a scalable, highly available SaaS company. If he ever had a job that made him do any of those things, he’d quickly realize that as CEO instead of chief computer tinkerer you suddenly start making those trade-offs. “I could pay 5 engineers devote 10% of their time to maintaining and patching a monitoring system, or I can just buy Datadog.” “I can spend 20% more time editing photos, or I can just buy Photoshop.” “I can spend 20% of our IT person’s time maintaining our self-hosted video conference solution and email server, or I can just buy G Suite.” Schools are actually one of the worst places for open source software. K-12 institutions are not technical and need a ton of hand-holding. And if the stuff breaks, your students will sit there twiddling their thumbs wasting taxpayer dollars.
  • gr2zr4 6y ago
    Let me ask you: is Stallman talking about schools or businesses? Just to be a little realistic: is there some "school activity" that makes using closed-software mandatory because there isn't an open-source alternative?
    • December_Stars 6y ago
      There's a few but those are quite prominent. Most notably I remember when I took Physics 1 we used some very specific software which name I do not remember but it was proprietary and only on Windows. Other than that almost every class can be done entirely with free software, at least in HS.
      • 6y ago
• romantomjak 6y ago
  To play the devil’s advocate - I reckon it’s all to do with support. If something breaks they can just pick up the phone and tell them to sort it out. What will they do when a random open source program breaks? Open a github issue? I’m also sure deals like that come with other goodies, for example, my university offered free, licensed windows, office & visual studio installations. Also, electronics course had windows-only software that we all had to use. I’m sure it’s not that easy to switch. There must be deals on deals upon deals depending on where the school budget comes from and who approves it and so on.
  • rimliu 6y ago
    This point is lost on stallmanists. They still live with assumption that every user is a programmer or at least very interested in _controlling_ the software. No. Majority just want to use the software for whatever they need it to. Writers just want to write books, digital artists just want to paint, etc.
    • fsflover 6y ago
      You can call me a "stallmanist" if you like, but this point has been explained many times in the essays of Stallman. In short: No one has to be a programmer. Free software allows you to hire anyone to work on your software, just like with car repairs.
      • rimliu 6y ago
        And I can just call the vendor without looking for someone on github. I am a bit bitter here, because I grew up in make-believe idealogically driven society (USSR), so things reminding me that give me the mental allergy.
        • fsflover 6y ago
          The difference is monopoly versus free market of programmers.
• bradly 6y ago
  The day before our kinder's and second grader's school started we got a message from the teacher that they were changing the software to be used for remote teaching at the last moment. This sounded very strange so we googled the company name, Acellus. It turns out the curriculum is filled with racist and sexist content. I do not believe this would have happened if using FOSS. https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/08/hawaii-schools-dump-distance-learning-program-over-racist-content/ https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/08/hawaii-schools-dump-distan...
  • EricE 6y ago
    lol - just look at the code of conduct fiasco with Linux over the last year or so. If you think FOSS is immune from ideological injection your deluding yourself.
    • bradly 6y ago
      I do not believe FOSS elementary curriculum would have racist and sexist content.
      • EricE 6y ago
        That's a nice belief, but there is nothing special with FOSS that would prevent it. Majority rules when there is no hierarchical structure - for example the amount of politically motivated editorializing in Wikipedia makes whole swaths of it highly questionable - article content is driven by the largest tribe, not facts.
        • mixmastamyk 6y ago
          The fact that it is open makes replacing content trivial. Try replacing the content of the proprietary solution mentioned and let us know how it goes.
        • bradly 6y ago
          It's not about majority rules–it is about openness. I'm not concerned if a single person controls the content or a large community ruled by the majority. What matters to me is that the content is publicly available for all to see and review. With open curriculum parents can look at what is being taught and make a decision based on the content. In a closed system this is not possible. The only reason Acellus became an issue this year was because someone on twitter took a picture of their child's lesson and luckily the media picked up on it.
• puskavi 6y ago
  Computer science in here is basically windblows office training. fucking sad.
• solarman5000 6y ago
  I can't agree more with stallman. It pisses me off to no end that I was forced to learn autodesk in school, only to graduate and realizing nobody uses it in the real world. So why did my school pay to teach software nobody uses? Might as well used FreeCAD to teach the concepts. I read this article a while ago, and made the decision to ban chromebooks in my house. I scored a couple cheap laptops, threw Ubuntu MATE on them, and told my kids to have fun, break it, fix it, do anything they want. I'm gonna raise admins, while the school raises ignorant complacent users
  • vilifiedtwin 6y ago
    Why do you need school to learn how to use the software? Isn't what manual and manufacturer resources is for? School should teach general knowledge about the topic so you should know which tool to pick and why.
  • exotree 6y ago
    Autodesk is most certainly used by a huge variety of businesses for a multitude of purposes. Is it the only solution? No. But the school also likely got the software at a steep discount or free, exposing you, as a student, to CAD software in general. What tools you use following that are up to you, but the school did its job in teaching you a general skill that can be applied in a variety of other programs at will.
    • sterkekoffie 6y ago
      >What tools you use following that are up to you For most, they're up to your employer. If everyone I interview knows AutoCAD because they all learned AutoCAD in college, I'm probably going to purchase AutoCAD. Companies provide those steep discounts to students because they want to condition you, not because it's good PR. And it's such an effective strategy that you never even have to consider that other programs exist, let alone that they could be worth your time.
      • pnutjam 6y ago
        Last time I worked with CAD people, solidworks was making inroads on autoCAD. It's a slow change industry.
• HPsquared 6y ago
  Why stop at software? This argument could also be applied to all copyrighted or patented objects, which nobody would advocate doing without. Why is software special?
  • gr2zr4 6y ago
    in fact open-hardware and open-ISA are a fact.
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    > which nobody would advocate doing without I will advocate right now doing without any copyrighted or patented objects in government if at all practical. Am I anyone?
  • murgindrag 6y ago
    Three things: 1) If I buy a table, I can, in fact, modify it, resell it, and understand it. I can understand the world around me. 2) If I buy a book, it doesn't come with an EULA which makes me promise my firstborn to a trillion-dollar company. I had patents which expired, and copyrights with fair use provisions. There was a legislative balance. 3) Until a few decades ago, cars and electronics did come with service manuals which, for radios and TVs, contained the full circuit schematic. The sorts of rights Stallman is talking about are ones which software is new in taking away. I'd like them back.
• jakuboboza 6y ago
  Well schools should do both and learn skills that are easily transferable. Show options, but not deny any out right option. That is the theory. Often program for pupils is written by some dude in capital who gets a slice of the pie. Or is not competent enough to know that there is free software. It is a vicious circle if you have super good education system your country grows if not you go to shits. I'm not an expert but I think that the better education system is the better prospects for future in any given country is. When I was in primary school all we learned was MS-DOS + Norton Commander :D In high school we had some of the Windows 95 stuff, Word and ofc all the way since later primary to end of highschool Turbo Pascal.
• nelaboras 6y ago
  This is the wrong perspective. The perspective should be on governments taking that role and use educational funds to generate commons. There are several issues around making all this work, but the key issue is scale: an individual school has no capacity to decide or handle that, they can only choose what works. It's at regional or national level that there's sufficient scale. At the same time can an education system set up software etc that rivals the effectiveness of professional and smooth software? Sometimes easier than contract than to try and create/adapt aomehtknf yourself
  • StillBored 6y ago
    I came here to say much the same about textbooks. In the case of textbooks not much has changed with middle school algebra in the past 100+ years, but we are still paying >$100 a textbook (these days ebooks!) for books which can be found with a google search. In many cases because the free books are missing some fine tuning an individual state wants to make. In the us we have "common core" in a lot of states, and if there is a problem with a free e-book, they should have hired someone to fix it rather than paying the big publishing books orders of magnitude more money for book rentals. Similarly with software, maybe the commercial offerings are better this year, but we should be _investing_ in open solutions rather than paying rent to large corporations only interested in profiteering in the education sector. But those companies, and the lack of widespread political will makes it generally infeasable for any single school district to create a "google classroom" (or whatever). A few states getting together and putting wording in the procurement process that say that commercial offerings which are based on free software are preferred, and where solutions fall short, a small fraction of the payment to the commercial offering needs to be redirected as investment in open software. The goal is to create Redhat type organizations that improve and support free software offerings, rather than proprietary solutions which cannot be afforded by the smaller or economically disadvantaged districts.
• duxup 6y ago
  Would it be viable to start with 100% free software and build a business that sells it as a service to schools? That way training and etc would be available and etc? When I think of it that way and my son's elementary school the sheer volume of changes and additions and ... I duno that seems like a HUGE lift to get them anywhere near where they are now in terms of features, ease of use, administration, etc. I like the philosophy here, I just don't know if it is possible to get anywhere near the same level of features and etc.
  • jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
    This is the freedom business model. Share the software, spend time supporting users, charge for support. SQLite is public domain. Think about that.
    • duxup 6y ago
      I'm just thinking in the sense of scale of what you have to do ... just to get to where someone wants to buy it is pretty huge.
      • jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
        Share the software. Sell services. Workshops, installations, consultations, support. Use money from sale of services to continue service. Repeat. Get some charismatic people to go door to door, splash around some booze and joy with top decision makers at large institutions. With friends in high places, suddenly there's no shortage of clients wanting to run free software and pay for your services. It also takes the piss right out of proprietary software's only competitive selling point: being able to call someone to fix your broken software for you.
        • duxup 6y ago
          My point is that I think the mountain of changes / features required is pretty high if you're cobbling free software together to create something someone at a school will buy, before you can even make a sale. I'm also not sure schools or non tech focused businesses really think THAT much about just calling some rando to fix their software. That's a whole other process that isn't easy / sure to do the thing you want.
• vilifiedtwin 6y ago
  This could be quite demotivating to students given that many of the open source developers live near the poverty line. It only teaches that it may not be the best career move.
• EricE 6y ago
  I know this is hard for some to grasp - but not everyone wants to learn how to code! I have no problem advocating that when teaching about computers open source software makes sense. However, blanket advocation that there is zero value in proprietary software is just plain nuts and bordering on religious zealotry. Life is about balance; extremes are rarely useful - especially long term.
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    You don't have to learn to code to use FOSS. > Life is about balance; extremes are rarely useful - especially long term. This is the moderation fallacy.
    • criddell 6y ago
      > This is the moderation fallacy. Yeah? Go on... Without elaboration it sounds like the fallacy fallacy.
      • solarman5000 6y ago
        Better explained here: https://lmgtfy.com/?q=moderation+fallacy https://lmgtfy.com/?q=moderation+fallacy
      • murgindrag 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
        • criddell 6y ago
          Fallacy fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
          • murgindrag 6y ago
            Yeah, that just didn't happen here. Pessimizer pointed out the moderation fallacy. For an argument from fallacy to have happened, he would have needed to use that to invalidate some conclusion from that argument.
• extremeMath 6y ago
  I think consumers and companies should go their best to shift to them too. Most of our digital world is built on free code not proprietary crap.
  • gr2zr4 6y ago
    ...and open-standards
• TrackerFF 6y ago
  I'm happy to see that Academia has embraced Python the past years. When I went to college, almost every science class which required coding / scripting used MATLAB. Luckily stats classes either used R or Octave, but MATLAB was generally heads above anything else, in terms of usage. I have observed that some businesses and groups, that sprung out of Academia, still heavily use MATLAB. I guess that's logical - as their users come from MATLAB-heavy environments. But still, it kinda sucks because: - MATLAB is still proprietary, and costs money - The larger the codebase becomes, the more incentive there is to stick with MATLAB - You somewhat limit yourself on potential candidates that can (or WANT) to work with MATLAB. The only true benefits I see from using proprietary languages like MATLAB, would be very specific and optimized packages / libraries, along with good support...but then again, being dependent on vendors for updates is rarely a comfortable experience.
  • abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    I have used MATLAB extensively. I exclusively use python these days. I would say in terms of quality MATLAB is 8.5/10 and python is like a 6.5. I am always searching google to fix something not working on python. In matlab, just refer to the docs.
    • bitdivision 6y ago
      I would say the exact opposite. I found MATLAB painful to work with at university. Using python for everything after that has been a breath of fresh air.
  • analog31 6y ago
    I work in an industry R&D group. We're a Python shop, for the most part. I've noticed that when we hire recent graduates, it pretty much doesn't matter if they've used MATLAB or Python. If they're likely to become good coders, then they come up to speed on Python equally quickly. If not, then MATLAB tends to have more canned apps that they can use as-is or modify, but they're also unlikely to get deeply into computational work anyway. My daughter took a college class that involved some programming, and they were told that they could use the tool of their choice, MATLAB, Python, whatever. I suggested: Use whatever the teacher is using, which happened to be MATLAB. A benefit of MATLAB is that for basic use, it all comes from one place, and there's pretty much exactly one way to set it up. This practically eliminates the day wasted getting the tools working on each student's computer. With Python, unless you give them strict instructions to use a particular repository such as Anaconda, or an online tool, they will discover a myriad of blogs with conflicting advice on how to get Python running, with the most opinionated having the worst advice. With that said, so long as I've followed a consistent recipe for getting Python onto a computer, It's always been great. I've been quite happy with WinPython.
• marc3842h 6y ago
  My primary and secondary school used Free Software extensively. They ran Ubuntu on all school laptops and everyone used LibreOffice. The web browser of choice was Firefox. The teachers recommended us to use LibreOffice at home too in order to have full compatibility for our assignments. I spoke with the IT manager of the school and he's a real fan of open-source. He gave a talk at a open-source convention about it (in german)[0]. In this video he talks about how he convinced the local government to budget this, how it saved cost and much more. I think this is a great example that this can work and more schools should try this out. From what I heard, the teachers didn't have too many problems and my classmats were quick to adopt without many problems. If I'm honest, I experience more problems with the Microsoft stack in my current school. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY47YY5BIGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY47YY5BIGc
  • cpach 6y ago
    Out of curiosity: How did the pupils react to this environment? Where they annoyed or did they like it?
    • marc3842h 6y ago
      I think most didn't notice. Basically everyone in our class used their smartphone as primary computing device, only a few even have used laptops or computers at home. Those that did were quickly able to adapt and I only rarely heard complaints.
    • murgindrag 6y ago
      I've been in similar environments. Kids are flexible, resilient, and don't really notice things like this after a very short time. I was in a summer program in high school where we used Unix, and I think there was a one or two week curve before it was just in the background. In schools, kids put up with much more bizarre things. At the end of the day, they just come to understand that's what the world is.
    • jcelerier 6y ago
      in France most (if not every) public school uses OO/LO - and not since a couple years ago, it's been almost 15 years. Never heard of anyone having an issue with it.
• asciimov 6y ago
  While I understand Stallman's appeal to morals, the concerns a school has is preparing students for the future and technical support for administration. The only software kids really have to understand before leaving school is Windows and Office, because every business uses it. If you have an issue with a Microsoft product you can get help for it. The same can't be said for open source products.
  • ragnese 6y ago
    It's a vicious cycle, though. The kids learn MS Office (and basically no actual computer savvy skills) and then they become manager some day and buy a shit-ton of Office licenses for a business/department that doesn't need any of that. I've seen these "computer" classes here in the U.S. It's embarrassing stuff like "which menu is the 'copy' command in?". That wont even be true for later versions of Office/Photoshop/Whatever anyway!
    • asciimov 6y ago
      Those "computer" classes, like the majority of US classes, target the least capable students. You gotta start them somewhere. Long ago I was trained with MS Works, a extinct product that I sometimes miss.
  • Avamander 6y ago
    > The only software kids really have to understand before leaving school is Windows and Office, because every business uses it. Absolutely not. They need to understand the fundamentals that allow them to use any software they have to. MSOffice is a microscopic part of the computing kids need to understand this decade.
• colinrand 6y ago
  I think there is also a mismatch in current software development practices for proprietary SaaS product versus what learning environment need. Modern SaaS companies believe in updating their user experiences early and often i.e. 'continuous delivery vs. big bang' improvements. It's baked into our agile thinking at our core now. However, in the learning environment, the last thing you want is for the platform to change in small, often subtle ways, that will confuse students and teachers, forcing them to spend time not on the material of the lesson but on the medium of the communications. This causes significant and unnecessary frustration for all involved.
• zerop 6y ago
  Had been a solo entrepreneur in edutech sector and I can tell you this may not work. Schools need customisation, support and dont have IT expertise for anything.
• ponker 6y ago
  No. There is almost no free application software that is better than the proprietary equivalent, especially when operated by someone of average tech fluency. The education of our children should not be the proving ground for this effort. (For systems software of course the Free alternatives are far superior but that’s why nobody has to write essays in their defense).
  • Avamander 6y ago
    You're incorrect. BigBlueButton, Jitsi, Moodle and others are just as usable to kids. It's the teachers that are computer-illiterate and have issues with _everything_ that they haven't been taught how to use.
• mcv 6y ago
  With pain in my heart I just installed MS Office on my son's laptop because he needs it for school (free on a license from school fortunately). I thought it was stupid because LibreOffice. He thought it was stupid because Google Docs, which his primary school used. I particularly find it stupid because Open Document Format is what students should be using, not some proprietary format. Thing is, schools want to teach, not maintain software. And many companies offer attractive ways for schools to provide their students with the software they need. Someone should do the same with Free Software, make sure it works perfectly, and then call every single school to convince them to use this instead of Microsoft or Google. And then schools will still prefer the system that everybody else is using and has proven itself.
  • MH15 6y ago
    Next time you can always have your son install it on his laptop, maybe he'll start exploring other options.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Colleges could support this by having their programming students actively develop and maintain software to support the education ecosystem. would be great learnings for all
• protomyth 6y ago
  Oh no, please no. The user interface is bad enough for all these parents just trying to get their kids online and doing two things at once on a Chromebook. I cannot imagine the support cost if they were using free software given that's much harder to setup. Also, training is not going to happen. The UI needs to be discoverable.
• alan_n 6y ago
  Most kids could barely work the programs in my school let alone fix them. This almost sounds like OSS wants to use the schools to create future bug fixers. Also there isn't a one size fits all criteria (e.g. use the best software, most popular, etc). My views on this are slightly different depending on the situation. - Situation 1. The class is about teaching some piece of software (e.g. graphic design, 3d, video editing). In that case the class should put an emphasis on the common tools and techniques regardless of what program they use. And contrary to what one would think just teaching more programs does not help. I'm currently in a trade school and we have one software related class and although they are doing the correct thing by teaching us using a variety of programs, the kids still learn by memorizing steps instead of tools because this is how they've always gotten by. - Situation 2. The software is secondary to the class (e.g. Teams/Zoom right now for virtual classes). In this case the easiest to use and the most appropriate for the job. In this case my school chose Teams and I think it's been a pretty good experience compared to the horror stories I hear about Zoom and custom implementations for exam taking at other schools.
• woeirua 6y ago
  This is hopelessly idealistic. It might make sense for some particular general purpose applications, e.g. Office -> LibreOffice, but at the college level there are simply not suitable free alternatives for many proprietary software packages. Additionally, many potential employers specifically want graduates with experience with those proprietary packages, so not providing them with that experience handicaps them relative to graduates from other schools that do provide that experience.
  • michaelmrose 6y ago
    Public Education is where you learn stuff like science, math, writing, literature. It is not where you learn how to use the current version of Microsoft office that will be obsolete in 5 years. Anyone who is computer literate can likely be trained to use a particular software package by their employer. This is especially true when their particular company is liable to use a fair bit of very specific applications/web applications to manage the company's particular business. It is impossible and pointless to worry about whether high school graduates know particular software packages when there are many and varied different choices for any industry and so many industries to pick from. Higher ed should still be about the subject matter not once again particular soon to be obsolete versions of whatever software is common in their industry. When you spend 4-10 years learning a topic being 6 hours behind another applicant doesn't seem much like a handicap.
• GoToRO 6y ago
  I'm sorry but free software it's just a very big tree that is rooted at 0 dollars. That means that nothing can grow under that tree, no cheap alternatives will be feasible. So free software just makes everything expensive. I have yet to see a casual user crazy about any free application yet.
  • dotancohen 6y ago
    > I have yet to see a casual user crazy about any > free application yet. Invite me to dinner if you haven't heard about VIM yet.
    • GoToRO 6y ago
      casual user heard about vim? no way!
  • MH15 6y ago
    Blender? Now to be fair the Blender software is considered one of the most impressive independent open source projects but people LOVE it.
• pelasaco 6y ago
  Looking the schools under covid-19 and home-schooling under time and money constrains, this text couldn't be more wrong. Using 100% of open-source tools, no teacher on Earth would be able to do their work.
  • pelasaco 6y ago
    just don't downvote. Instead come up with an open source alternative for Google suite, supporting their workflows, conference integration, fine tuned for short loop feedback (student/teacher) and deployable by any elementary teacher. And tons of Gigabytes of disk space.
• SMAAART 6y ago
  Why would anyone pay for software? In my company we use GSUite and - for those who need offline software - LibreOffice works great!
• mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Especially with older age groups it makes pragmatic sense to try to use the same software as the pupils are likely to encounter in their professional life. In the majority of cases this means Windows and Office.
  • Liquix 6y ago
    Then we end up with more and more schools using M$ because all the businesses use it, and more businesses using M$ because all the kids know it. This is bad for our kids, bad for creating critical thinking employees, bad for pretty much everyone besides Microsoft. If it gets bad enough the government has to step in and strong-arm them like they did with Bell. I'd argue that anyone in a position to make these types of decisions for their organization has a societal obligation to consider the potential consequences of "just going with the flow" when it comes to contributing to an AWS/Google/Microsoft type monopoly.
    • mytailorisrich 6y ago
      Schools are not in a position to change this. They can use whatever they want but then pupils will need to learn things like windows and Office (or Google AWS, Oracle, etc depending on what school we're talking about) when they leave school. So using free software as a matter of principle sounds like a wasted opportunity to teach pupils pragmatic and useful professional skills. This does not mean that schools cannot also use free software to broaden pupils' horizon, but exclusivity is not a good educational decision, IMHO. The question is rather why the vast majority of companies use Windows and Office (for example). This is where change has to happen first. That said, why does 'change has to happen'? Whether software is free software or not is not really an important operational and commercial consideration for a company when it picks software.
• renewiltord 6y ago
  In the next century we will achieve a state where everyone writes software of some sort. The best free software is built by people solving a problem for themselves or for something they really understand. Stallman will never build a good ed-tech suite. And today's teachers won't either. But the future teachers, all of whom will know how to build some sort of software, will. It is inevitable.
• fenesiistvan 6y ago
  As a software developer who lives from selling software licenses, I don't really like this free and open source movement.
• hindsightbias 6y ago
  I’ll ask the same question I’ve asked for 30 years. Maybe someone here has an answer or link. Is there any peer-reviewed evidence that computers in classrooms lead to better outcomes? I’ll cede the practical reality of the Covid era.
• sireat 6y ago
  Google Classroom is just a horrible horrible software (ahem SAAS) which is bad at integrating with anything. Plus I have the feeling that any time I'd spend trying to customize it for my students would be wasted because of Google tendency to just depreciate things. I recenty came back to Moodle after 10 year absence and it is not that bad by comparison. Sure it has lots of warts (and I am sure the underlaying code is a mess) but hey it's just a CRUD. Worst case scenario I can hack around it. I will probably get around to getting a program autograder for it.
• mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Lots of short-sighted and defeatist comments about software here, at HN no less. You'd think it was 1995. :D Newsflash: FLOSS applications are now best of breed, good-enough, or approaching it in every common area. Ubuntu Mate, Firefox, LibreOffice, Postgres, FreeCAD, Python, Audacity, Inkscape, Blender, VLC, Scribus, the list goes on.[1] All great for students. All used extensively in various industries. All very helpful if you need to learn another package later. We should be learning concepts in grade-schools anyway, not WFW 3.11, right? Support is available for purchase, as are developers. Think ahead five years, where we could be if a fraction of the torrents of money sent to Bezos, Gates, Brinn, and Page was redirected to these packages instead. FLOSS always gives more options, not fewer. Android, iOS, and the Web finally broke the Wintel stranglehold, yet most commenters seemingly unaware. Learning MS Office no longer means what it used to either, as it changes every year. Most regular folks just use Google Docs and don't have a need for 90% of the advanced features anyway. Certainly not students. Kids are very flexible, not rigid geriatrics. The fact that some niches are not yet served adequately is immaterial. Proprietary options like Zoom work fine on Linux. Kid uses it every day. That some projects are merely Open Source rather than Free Software is irrelevant in the short term as well. Sorry RMS. The process is a journey, and we don't have to arrive 100% today, or ever for the effort to be worthwhile. Let's get started now. /End of rant :D [1] https://elearningindustry.com/top-open-source-learning-management-systems https://elearningindustry.com/top-open-source-learning-manag...
  • MH15 6y ago
    - Inkscape compared to Illustrator is weak and extremely unoptimized, and until recently didn't really work on MacOS. - FreeCAD does everything different than common CAD packages, while Inventor and Solidworks are functionally equivalent. + Blender is fantastic, and better than Maya for education IMO as it runs on lower end hardware. - What percentage of students do you think really need to use Postgres?
    • mixmastamyk 6y ago
      Doesn't matter, we're talking about students. Some will use pg directly, most can use a gui via an office suite or browser. Databases are eating the world. ;-)
• beervirus 6y ago
  Any zealot could make the same argument about the object of his zealotry. “Schools should indoctrinate their students and teach them my way of thinking because it is so great!” Not everybody gives a shit about free software. Most people—by far—have no practical use for the freedoms it provides.
  • michaelmrose 6y ago
    That is like saying people have no practical use for freedom of speech because they have little or nothing to say. I recall the first phone I purchase with gps capability required one to pay $10 a month rental on the software required to use the hardware you had purchased. If you maintained such you would ultimately pay more for the privilege of using really really crummy mapping software than the cost of the entire phone. At the time nobody else was allowed to make mapping software for the phone much less offer it for sale or for free. Lack of software freedom is leverage you can use to make yourself richer not only at the expense of your customers wallets but at the expense of their maximal enjoyment or even well being. The various ecosystems that exist now even those full of paid for players is vibrant in part because of the freedom enjoyed by customers and other players. Even Apple for example benefits in part and has benefited from open source software that wouldn't exist without people who valued software freedom. People don't care about software freedom anymore than they particularly care about EPA regulations but they would care if they couldn't breath.
    • beervirus 6y ago
      > Even Apple for example benefits in part and has benefited from open source software that wouldn't exist without people who valued software freedom. Let’s not get into the free vs open source issue. Apple has benefited from open source, not from free software. My point is that if free software produces better software, then great—that’s something people care about. But that’s far from clear, and the fact that it’s free won’t make up for it being worse. It’s just irrelevant for almost everyone.
      • michaelmrose 6y ago
• pascoej 6y ago
  I spent hours (dialup) downloading what I thought was powerpoint to work on a school project as a kid and it turned out only to be a viewer. Unfortunately buying MS Office wasn’t in the budget either so I was SOL. Software in school should at least be gratis, which seems to be happening with google docs et all.
• Proven 6y ago
  Complete nonsense. There should be no publish schools to begin with. And what private schools do is none of GNU's concern.
• RRWagner 6y ago
  >> Proprietary software rejects their thirst for knowledge: it says, “The knowledge you want is a secret—learning is forbidden!” Proprietary software is the enemy of the spirit of education, so it should not be tolerated in a school, except as an object for reverse engineering. Myself, as the creator of the most widely-used K-12+ software of the 90s and early 2000s, HyperStudio, can say that nothing in that statement is true about the software that I created then, before, nor afterwards.
  • Hackbraten 6y ago
    Good point, and I appreciate your outstanding work and respect the fact that developers have to eat, too. One could still make a point over whether learning how your product works internally is kind of a secret when the child can’t look at the source code, can’t tinker with it to add features and can’t share that knowledge with others.