Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 233 posts

Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

#71

Post by barking »

Symbiote wrote: post #53
md5person wrote: post #22

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…

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 remem…

Who wrote the Four freedoms and how does he put food on the table?

Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

#72

Post by type0 »

raister wrote: post #56
dependenttypes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will probably get downvoted a lot Because this is not relevant with the topic at all?

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 typed "python" on windows the other day and it open the MS-Store, asked me to install Python3.8.3. I said OK.

This is exactly why the proprietary software like Windows is so bad for you

Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

#73

Post by rorykoehler »

marta_morena_24 wrote: post #43
zelphirkalt wrote: post #30

Obviously he is a great (one of the best?) teachers. Having the lecture use free software only, shows he also cares about ethics at his work. I think that makes him a better teacher. Far too few people in CS care about the ethics side as well.

Yeah right, because MIT is such a cheap school, it totally is required to use free software, because that is going to make a difference. Instead, MIT should make sure that students get their software and materials free of charge, not that the material or software itself is free (just because students on scholarships or alike may not have the money). They should use what is best for the students and not what is best t…

What's best for students is what's best for society too. That means open standards and open source.

Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

#74

Post by ranaexmachina »

mellosouls wrote: post #67

It made available licenses for various nonfree programs, but I objected to them on grounds of principle. I hope he also objected to taking payment for his own services on grounds of principle, lest people think of him as rather sanctimonious.

Not getting payed is not the point of free software.

Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

#75

Post by neilv »

mellosouls wrote: post #67

It made available licenses for various nonfree programs, but I objected to them on grounds of principle. I hope he also objected to taking payment for his own services on grounds of principle, lest people think of him as rather sanctimonious.

That criticism sounded a bit harsh and hasty. Sussman has done a lot of good, and one instance you might've heard of the ground breaking of giving away a top textbook, SICP, on the early Web.

Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

#76

Post by neilv »

For a professor to use only FLOSS when teaching CS students about software engineering seems entirely appropriate to me, and a good on-principle exercise.

Consider the goals of universal accessibility of education, reproducible systems research that can be built upon, allowing students to explore and improve systems, techie obligations to promote privacy and security in information systems, and simply setting an example to software engineering students that this is doable.

Also, MIT is one of the original homes of various FLOSS ideas, and if they can't manage to use FLOSS, who can? So maybe there's additional sense of professional obligation. And after he did it, it was written up, to encourage others to try it.

Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

#77

Post by md5person »

berkes wrote: post #65
md5person wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

I gave you an example by quoting how expensive it is to run a "free" jitsi service.

> "I gave you an example by quoting how expensive it is to run a "free" jitsi service."

That's an entirely meaningless argument. Here's what you're doing:

> "I run a large-ish jitsi instance: approx €50/month just for the VPS, my hours probably add another €2000/month to that."

Here's what Sussman is doing:

> "I used a Jitsi Meet server that I installed on an obsolete and otherwise useless computer that was sitting idle in my laboratory, on its way to the electronics junk heap."

The two scenarios are not comparable.

I'm not making exaggerated claims here. The University can absolutely afford to do better, the students (who pay exorbitant tuition fees) deserve better, and any "libre software" idealism here is simply people trying to cut costs, jeopardizing the quality of education and the overall experience, while touting moralistic superiority...

Distance learning, for example, could've been a much more widespread and accepted thing, had it not been for instructors cobbling up together scrapyard-bound hardware to use as a chat server. Coming up with a proper solution takes investing (time, money, expertise) - which some people will evidently avoid at all costs...

Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

#79

Post by fsloth »

Don't take this so much as about ideology, than as a mode of pedagogical thought. Free software is decomposable to first principles, and it makes perfect sense to use it in a CS class.

If this was some other domain like surgery or structural engineering, using free software would add no value to the process (since the domains are already so deep that the students anyway treat all software as black boxes since their own domain is difficult enough for one person to cope with).

So here I think is the line where it makes "sense" to use a free software in university teaching setting, or not. If a considerable percentage of the students are likely able to move beyond to the "black magic box" model of software to investigating actually the CS principles behind the software, then using a free stack is definetly beneficial for the education.

If the students anyway treat the software as a black box, then it makes sense to use a black box that is pedagogically most prudent, free or not.

Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

#80

Post by cellularmitosis »

> The class used a draft textbook that Chris Hanson and I have written. The book is entitled “Software Design for Flexibility (how to avoid programming yourself into a corner)”; it will be published by MIT Press soon, with a Creative Commons Share Alike license (and all the code in support of the book is under the GNU GPL)

Looking forward to this!!!

Post reply on HN