3 ms·

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-softwar

by 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.
- gr2zr4 6y ago
  > very specific software which name I do not remember but it was proprietary and only on Windows Because it was the only available software for that specific course or because your teacher told you "this is the software, period"?
  - December_Stars 6y ago
    Pretty sure this was the only available software, iirc it was some Vernier related thing.
    - Avamander 6y ago
      Yeah, buying hardware that has vendor-locks will lock you into that vendor's software.
H_Pylori 6y ago
>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? Closed source software may not be mandatory, but sure it can be convenient. For example in EE school we had this course in C programming. Few of us had any real programming background, for the lucky ones it was some variant of Pascal in high school, and we had to start somewhere. We used Visual Studio on the lab's PCs. We didn't use GCC. After all this was an introductory C programming course, learning how to set up a text editor and GCC was a waste of time for us in that particular context. And I'm limiting myself to programming, where you can make the case that there are compelling reasons to use free software (i.e. there are high quality, mature, "industry standard" free software solutions). In other areas, such as CAD, the free software alternatives are hobbyist level, at best. They are really not usable beyond the most basic use cases, proprietary solutions are basically mandatory. If you want a job at $aero_firm you should know CATIA. A curriculum with FreeCAD on it gets thrown into the trash. Finally I just wanted to add that I appreciate free software, but the zealotism of many of its proponents really puts me off, and my sentiment is shared by a lot of people.
dangus 6y ago
I think I provided plenty of reasons why a typical school wouldn’t deal with open source. It’s not about something being “mandatory” or not. Schools have budgets and employees just like a company, and they don’t have specialized staff skilled in technology with ample free time to do all the extra configuration and management that most open source software demands. Sure, they can purchase hosted enterprise versions of open source software. Of course, enterprise open source solutions have to compete on the same playing field as proprietary solutions (and many of them do! E.g. Gitlab). Why should a school district care if there’s source code available? What are they going to do with it? RMS subscribes to the flawed idea that the legitimately admirable ideals of FSF/GNU are important to everyone because they’re important to him. The idea that someone in charge of any organization, school, or business is going to make purchasing decisions based on ideology is somewhat naive.
- Avamander 6y ago
  > RMS subscribes to the flawed idea that the legitimately admirable ideals of FSF/GNU are important to everyone because they’re important to him. The fact that some administration doesn't care about software freedoms at that point in time, does not make those freedoms void or not worthy of reminder. It's like if you'd say that free speech isn't important because you have nothing to say. It's naive.
  - dangus 6y ago
    Personally, I don’t find the concept of free software to be analogous to free speech. I don’t think they are of the same level of importance, and aren’t even very similar concepts.

by gr2zr4 6y ago

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.

gr2zr4 6y ago
> very specific software which name I do not remember but it was proprietary and only on Windows Because it was the only available software for that specific course or because your teacher told you "this is the software, period"?
- December_Stars 6y ago
  Pretty sure this was the only available software, iirc it was some Vernier related thing.
  - Avamander 6y ago
    Yeah, buying hardware that has vendor-locks will lock you into that vendor's software.

H_Pylori 6y ago

>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? Closed source software may not be mandatory, but sure it can be convenient. For example in EE school we had this course in C programming. Few of us had any real programming background, for the lucky ones it was some variant of Pascal in high school, and we had to start somewhere. We used Visual Studio on the lab's PCs. We didn't use GCC. After all this was an introductory C programming course, learning how to set up a text editor and GCC was a waste of time for us in that particular context. And I'm limiting myself to programming, where you can make the case that there are compelling reasons to use free software (i.e. there are high quality, mature, "industry standard" free software solutions). In other areas, such as CAD, the free software alternatives are hobbyist level, at best. They are really not usable beyond the most basic use cases, proprietary solutions are basically mandatory. If you want a job at $aero_firm you should know CATIA. A curriculum with FreeCAD on it gets thrown into the trash. Finally I just wanted to add that I appreciate free software, but the zealotism of many of its proponents really puts me off, and my sentiment is shared by a lot of people.

dangus 6y ago

I think I provided plenty of reasons why a typical school wouldn’t deal with open source. It’s not about something being “mandatory” or not. Schools have budgets and employees just like a company, and they don’t have specialized staff skilled in technology with ample free time to do all the extra configuration and management that most open source software demands. Sure, they can purchase hosted enterprise versions of open source software. Of course, enterprise open source solutions have to compete on the same playing field as proprietary solutions (and many of them do! E.g. Gitlab). Why should a school district care if there’s source code available? What are they going to do with it? RMS subscribes to the flawed idea that the legitimately admirable ideals of FSF/GNU are important to everyone because they’re important to him. The idea that someone in charge of any organization, school, or business is going to make purchasing decisions based on ideology is somewhat naive.

Avamander 6y ago
> RMS subscribes to the flawed idea that the legitimately admirable ideals of FSF/GNU are important to everyone because they’re important to him. The fact that some administration doesn't care about software freedoms at that point in time, does not make those freedoms void or not worthy of reminder. It's like if you'd say that free speech isn't important because you have nothing to say. It's naive.
- dangus 6y ago
  Personally, I don’t find the concept of free software to be analogous to free speech. I don’t think they are of the same level of importance, and aren’t even very similar concepts.