Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software
1–10 of 233 posts
Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software
#2I am a fan of open software, and also a realist. I think what he did is great. My only concern is that the source code in the book is gpl licensed (and not MIT or better public domain). This means for the student taking the class he technically is not allowed to use anything later in his work life (except of course he works for an open source company, which only a few do, bigger exception if the company uses the software only inhouse - but then he is in the EE department, so this means most students might work on products later).
Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software
#3I am a fan of open software, and also a realist. I think what he did is great. My only concern is that the source code in the book is gpl licensed (and not MIT or better public domain). This means for the student taking the class he technically is not allowed to use anything later in his work life (except of course he works for an open source company, which only a few do, bigger exception if the company uses the soft…
Most coursework is (implicitly) proprietary, and that's not a problem, so I wouldn't expect an issue there. I suspect the key issue here is that the students are unlikely to be copying the material at a level which would qualify as a derivative work.
Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software
#4While 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.
Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software
#5While 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.
I must be doing something wrong, because all of my work over the past decade was done using mostly (like 95%) free software. And as a hiring manager I cared not at all if my hires know about "enterprise commercial software". In fact, I'd also add that the time I spent learning commercial dev tools (Microsoft stack) turned out to be absolutely useless in the long term. Worse than useless, in fact, because I could have spent that time learning tools and libraries on which some commercial company doesn't pull the rug from underneath me every 2-3 years, like Microsoft has a habit to do, to force upgrades.
Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software
#6The instructor is also one of the authors of SICP.
Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software
#7While 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.
FWIW, most people that take classes with Sussman are self-selected to be people who care about FOSS.
Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software
#8While 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.
I do not think the job of universities is to teach how to use any specific piece of software - be it enterprise, commercial, proprietary, free or not. That software changes and often different between companies, so what should be learned is knowledge that applies regardless of software.
And TBH i do not see why a university should provide free (or worse, paid[0]) advertisement material for a commercial product.
[0] i mean paid by the software companies and it is worse because usually the students either paid for the admission to the university, meaning they paid to get advertised to, or they enrolled in a public university, meaning the taxpayers paid money to have their children advertised to
Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software
#9While 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.
Using “free for education” software is how you end up over a barrel with MathWorks.
Re: Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software
#10While 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.
His courses are about obscure areas of programming, not some business-facing spreadsheet juggling.