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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

#131

Post by neilv »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #125
neilv wrote: post #76

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 exam…

Sussman is not just "a professor at MIT." He's one of the inventors of Scheme and one of the authors of SICP. And perhaps most apropos for this article, one of the founders of the FSF, along with of course RMS.

Sussman is awesome. But I'd like all professors, everywhere, to consider FLOSS as a possible good match for their missions -- and not dismiss it as something for only a handful of exceptional specialists to do.

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

#132

Post by rimliu »

phkahler wrote: post #116
neilv wrote: post #76

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 exam…

My approach in all area - work include - is to use FLOSS by default unless I can't for some reason. Usability is one reason, and as a developer it's good to observe the flaws that drive me to commercial software at times. Why would anyone not choose FLOSS by default?

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.

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

#133

Post by vhakulinen »

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.

You could try to calculate some numbers on savings or "wasted hours because the corporate support is slow and wont fix our problems fast enough" to turn their heads around. Another pointer could be that the students could be involved in running some of the systems.

Usually, in situations like yours, turning complaints or proposed solutions into numbers helps a lot.

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

#134

Post by vertex-four »

barking wrote: post #130
vertex-four wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You find people willing to pay for your work, not for a license. If your ongoing work is not worth anything, why should you be paid extra for work you did in the past?

>If your ongoing work is not worth anything, why should you be paid extra for work you did in the past? If you write a piece of software that took you a year to write but buyers are only willing to pay $500 for then do (A) live on $500 or (b) try to sell to many buyers including some in the future? You seem to be saying (b) is out of the question but if it is who will write the software these people wish to buy?

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-source anyway. You can write an MVP, pitch it to potential clients, and write software that provides value to them. That's what I'm doing.

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

#135

Post by gspr »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #127
md5person wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 i…

"It made available licenses for various nonfree programs, but I objected to them on grounds of principle.". Which is to say Sussman could effectively, for the purposes of this course, get _any_ license for free-as-in-beer. So the actual decision would purely be on some other grounds. Since Sussman is a world renowned CS teacher, I choose to believe he made his choice based solely on whether it was most suitable to te…

> (This is not an unreasonable belief: The concept of "Free Software" guarantees that the student is able to take the software apart to see what makes it tick. That is obviously a very valuable property when learning how things work!)

And something that resonates very well with the basic attitude and culture of academia/research.

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

#136

Post by rimliu »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #118
Phlogi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the price, it's about the freedom I assume. Having free of charge proprietary software for students is a different approach. I wouldn't call it unethical though.

Why wouldn't you? Using software that restricts your freedom to use, modify, and share in the pursuit of advancing the human understanding of the universe around us seems to be short-sighted. Free Software gives everyone the equal opportunity to leverage the same tools and practices to do research, development, and further our understanding of our world. In most cases, proprietary software does not.

Wow. Please, explain, how writing a book in Libre Office instead of say, Pages, changes some physicists ability to research, development and furthering our understanding of our world. And no, free software does not give anything to everyone. A very small percentage of the world population could make use of the benifits it being open cource, and even smaller ever will.

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

#137

Post by kerkeslager »

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…

Well, first off, in this context they're using free=libre not free=gratis. (Free as in freedom, not free as in free beer).

Second, there are a lot of contexts where MIT's educational materials are available for free (gratis). I've taken a lot of MIT courses over the years and never paid a dime except to purchase a hard copy of SICP.

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

#138

Post by remexre »

enjoyyourlife wrote: post #18
noobermin wrote: post #15

It honestly would be great for some competition, FOSS or not in the distance learning department. Blackboard and friends are horrendous, and as we know zoom has myriad problems. For a small group meeting I have each week that is now online, I've started using jitsi too.

Canvas ( https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms ) is open-source

This actually surprises me, with how cruddy it is, I assumed it was proprietary... My uni switched to canvas from Moodle, to the general detriment of anyone without fast internet and a fast PC.

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

#139

Post by raister »

type0 wrote: post #72
raister wrote: post #56

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 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

I know! That's exactly my point! I didn't like it when it landed somewhere in my drive. I'm not saying proprietary is good, I'm saying it's better (these days), despite this little things that they do for high-level users. In a nutshell: they don't know who their users are: beginners, intermediate, advanced. They have to appease a lot of users, so they do these things and usually get away scot free.

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

#140

Post by ghaff »

httpsterio wrote: post #108
marta_morena_24 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honestly, it's not necessarily feasible to run all the tools one might have at the university and if the only way of doing science is by using expensive apps only available to rich individuals or companies that are well off, well its quite limiting in who can gain an attractive amount of experience working with it. It also sets a baseline for every student and prepares them for a future where science is made to be sh…

Personally I think it's a great practice to default to FOSS, whether community bits or commercially supported for a variety of reasons. However:

>if the only way of doing science is by using expensive apps only available to rich individuals or companies that are well off, well its quite limiting in who can gain an attractive amount of experience working with it.

The same might be said of all the expensive hardware and other facilities required for many STEM (and even other) courses. Electron microscopes and MRI machines (and exotic computer hardware) are scarce resources however you look at it.

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