61–70 of 233 posts
Great that his institution lets him run servers for his classrooms from “any” place. At my school, first thing: disconnect all your servers except for required lavoratory things. ...
A. MIT is as renowned as it is
B. MIT does this
C. MIT has people like Gerald Sussman as Professors
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 con…
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…
Why are we going back-and-forth about this again?
I previously asked whether there were concrete examples of software used during the course that were "free as in freedom" but NOT "free as in beer", and the response to my question was that no such examples were available.
It's the actions that matter here, and the bottom line is that they weren't intending to pay for anything to begin with. And by that, they were abdicating the "it's not about the money" argument, in my honest opinion.
I will probably get downvoted a lot, and this is more or less pertinent to this, so here's a rant: I am quite sick to make software work these days: someone coded something using Python3.6 and numpy1.18.5 then three years pass. Now, it's Python3.8.9 and the software is incompatible with it, so now I have to download Python3.6.5 (not Python 3.6.1) e try to make things work. But then TLS/SSL was discontinued and I'm ge…
While commendable, I don’t think this approach is useful. I also had a professor that only wanted to use FOSS for its students but the reality is that university should prepare - at least to a certain degree - for work. The radicalization of this approach leads to students that land their first job without knowing how enterprise commercial software work lacking therefore a very useful entry level skill.
You cite "a professor", and this article is also about a singular professor. That implies that this is the exception, not the rule. Students have ample opportunities elsewhere for exposure to "enterprise commercial software". The delta between Jitsi Meet and Zoom or Teams for video-conferencing is minimal from a user experience perspective. The idea that a CS graduate from MIT would struggle to figure out Zoom or Tea…
What is worse, is that if this was the case, the University failed spectacularly in their goal. I would mean they trained a monkey to do one trick.
I sincerely hope a university like MIT is better than simply training monkeys some tricks which they then repeat ad-infinitum at "their jobs".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> "You seem to fail to grasp the difference between "free as in beer" (gratis) and "free as in freedom" (libre)." Why are we going back-and-forth about this again? I previously asked whether there were concrete examples of software used during the course that were "free as in freedom" but NOT "free as in beer", and the response to my question was that no such examples were available. It's the actions that matter here…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's kinda relevant: I imagine sending kids an assignment 3 years old and make them run with current software versions... A lot of them would be disgusted by this back-and-forth installing, tweaking, re-installing, virtual envs, all of that, and will only uses windows let's say, which hides almost everything from the user these days. I typed "python" on windows the other day and it open the MS-Store, asked me to inst…
I still don't see the relevance. How does this relate in any way to "proprietary vs free/libre" software used in classes?
Open source sw these days: several versions, constant tweaking, works so-so (depends on the software), semi-professional developers working on it (I am not saying they're not good) or amateurs (with amateur designs), not for profit, of course. EDIT: remove double 'multiple versions'.
I hope he also objected to taking payment for his own services on grounds of principle, lest people think of him as rather sanctimonious.
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…
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.
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…
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?
Typically those who utilize open software for commercial ends contribute code. Opensource contributors are hired by companies using their software.
The instructor is also one of the authors of SICP.