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Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

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

#151

Post by nanna »

neilv wrote: post #142
nanna wrote: post #129

I teach at a world ranking university in the UK which has decided that in order to have a 'standardised student experience' teachers are prohibited from running their own FLOSS setup when there are proprietary contracts in place. Sorry but MS Teams is not designed with teaching in mind. I've been advocating for Big Blue Button and Jitsi but effectively told to shut up. It's infuriating.

If some of the faculty researched the relevance of FLOSS to university missions, and then made a good argument for it, do you think the university would change this IT policy?

Senior management are the ones making these calls about enforcing standardised systems, and they do not take advice from us pipsqueaks below.

Right now everythings in emergency mode anyway so as far as they're concerned outsourcing everything to Microsoft is one less problem. Everything can be justified by the state of exception.

Kudos to MIT for leaving their staff to make such calls for themselves. I know Sussman is a superstar but still. I'm sure a culture like that helps contribute to MIT being the world's most highly ranked university.

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

#152

Post by nanna »

craigsmansion wrote: post #93

I think one of the nicer points to take away here is that prof. Sussman worked around remote teaching problems not by getting bogged down in meetings, but by calling a friendly admin and by himself installing a piece of free software on a computer he had lying around in his lab. Free Software gives you back the agency to solve your problems in any way you see fit(be they hacks or not). It doesn't leave you helpless a…

So long as there isn't a bureaucracy in place to get in the way. That's a limit of Free Software.

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

#153

Post by ryanianian »

fsflover wrote: post #148
rimliu wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to your question is in your comment. When you consistently have to pick commercial software over floss because of the usability, it makes sense to skip that step and go to the commercial software right away.

The problem with your reasoning is that often free software is better in usability.

Familiarity and momentum makes even convoluted and unusable software feel more usable (pointing finger at MSOffice).

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

#154

Post by vertex-four »

barking wrote: post #145
vertex-four wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find multiple buyers before you write the software, you know - you don't have to have just one person paying you. If it's consumer software, things like Kickstarter or Patreon are how this is often done - if it's b2b, this is how a lot of software development is done anyway. Examples of software successfully funded via crowdfunding include Spine, Magit, and Diaspora - although Spine appears to be closed-sourc…

But planning/hoping to sell copies in the future is unethical, is it?

Yes, copyright is unethical, as is closed-source distribution. Sell actual work - there's always work to be done on or around software. My project is livestreaming software, but it turns out there's plenty of folks who don't want to set up livestreaming software, they just want to pay someone for the result of having a solid branded stream - so my business model is providing them that end. If I could do it reasonably with existing software, I would, but I can't, so I'm writing software for it.

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

#155

Post by spicyramen »

Thanks to open source projects students are able to learn, experiment and grow. I was lucky enough to have one of our professors introduced me to Asterisk for VoIP calls. Being able to learn and modify the code base and contribute back to the community are skills which helped me grow as a professional

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

#156

Post by barking »

vertex-four wrote: post #154
barking wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But planning/hoping to sell copies in the future is unethical, is it?

Yes, copyright is unethical, as is closed-source distribution. Sell actual work - there's always work to be done on or around software. My project is livestreaming software, but it turns out there's plenty of folks who don't want to set up livestreaming software, they just want to pay someone for the result of having a solid branded stream - so my business model is providing them that end. If I could do it reasonably…

And there's nothing to stop someone else letting you write all the code and get paid for the bit you charge for, right. In fact they could work full time on that while you have to spend time doing software updates/maintenance etc.

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

#157

Post by barking »

fsflover wrote: post #146
barking wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But planning/hoping to sell copies in the future is unethical, is it?

Why do you think so? Purism created its products using crowdfunding, i.e. they sold their devices (and free software on them) before anyting was created.

They're a device maker then

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

#158

Post by fsflover »

ryanianian wrote: post #153
fsflover wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your reasoning is that often free software is better in usability.

Familiarity and momentum makes even convoluted and unusable software feel more usable (pointing finger at MSOffice).

This is exactly why we need to teach students with free software.

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

#159

Post by frabbit »

nanna wrote: post #129

I teach at a world ranking university in the UK which has decided that in order to have a 'standardised student experience' teachers are prohibited from running their own FLOSS setup when there are proprietary contracts in place. Sorry but MS Teams is not designed with teaching in mind. I've been advocating for Big Blue Button and Jitsi but effectively told to shut up. It's infuriating.

Keep advocating :)

One thing about Big Blue Button though: a friend teaches in a smallish university and has been trying to find out how to get simple, turnkey hosted installations of it (the IT department is not interested). It seems inordinately difficult to simply create an account with one of the listed hosters on the page and start paying. The big draw of BBB is the whiteboarding feature.

The alternative is Jisti Meet with the "Presenter" mode sharing a LibreOffice window, which actually works pretty well, but would be better if it were possible to toggle on/off the thumbnail of the presenter (it currently occupies about the lower right ninth of the screen).

Jitsi Meet is so far (out of Teams, BlueJeans (no linux desktop client and therefore no whiteboard), BBB) the best.

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

#160

Post by vertex-four »

barking wrote: post #156
vertex-four wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, copyright is unethical, as is closed-source distribution. Sell actual work - there's always work to be done on or around software. My project is livestreaming software, but it turns out there's plenty of folks who don't want to set up livestreaming software, they just want to pay someone for the result of having a solid branded stream - so my business model is providing them that end. If I could do it reasonably…

And there's nothing to stop someone else letting you write all the code and get paid for the bit you charge for, right. In fact they could work full time on that while you have to spend time doing software updates/maintenance etc.

If I'm not making money off it, I'm going to stop writing it and find something else to do, obviously?

Being able to say "I have deep technical knowledge of this domain, proven by the fact that I literally wrote the software and can customise it to your needs" is worth something, unsurprisingly.

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