Free Software (Part 2: In Schools)

Different kinds of software [8]

<< Part 1

Introduction

Last week [9], I outlined the definition and philosophy of free software, and explained parts of Richard Stallman’s argument of why people who consider themselves contributing members of a good society should only use free software. I tried to emphasize that the issue is not about software or technology, but rather about people’s freedom to cooperate with each other and make positive contributions to our society. It is a political and social issue, not so much a technological one.

Indeed, the term “free software” doesn’t refer to the price of the software, but to the freedoms that people have to [1; p.20, pp.165-166]:

• Run it, for any purpose.
• Modify it to suit their needs.
• Redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee.
• Distribute modified versions for the benefit of the community.

Since last week, I finished reading Stallman’s collection of essays “Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman” [1], and added a few references to my previous blog entry to help readers find more information more effectively. I also found other resources, such as the diagram at the beginning of this entry, which should help explain how various kinds of software relate to each other.

In a nutshell, a proprietary software has a claim of ownership made on it, where as a free software does not. A claim of authorship, however, can be made on a free software, since authorship does not violate any of the four necessary freedoms. [1; pp. 47-51]

This week I’ll focus on the special reasons that schools have to use only free software. Some of these reasons were outlined by Stallman during his talk on May 15th [2], while others are my own extrapolations. When paraphrasing Stallman’s ideas, I will cite from one of his online essays on the subject. [3]

Practical Reasons

First is the cost. Free software, in addition to giving the user more freedom, is generally… well… pretty inexpensive. Having the freedom to copy and install a piece of software on as many computers as needed, and to share it with other schools has tremendous financial benefits. [3] Although financial considerations might be considered pretty shallow by some, money saved by not buying proprietary software is money that is hopefully spent to enhance other aspects of the students’ educational experience. The financial reason, however, is not the best reason since companies selling proprietary software often give their software to school free of charge (or at a discounted rate).

Accepting to use proprietary software under these conditions is dangerous in a short term (since companies may decide to charge for subsequent upgrades [3]), but there are also long term ethical problems with schools using proprietary software. The longer we encourage students to use proprietary software, the more addicted they become to it. I believe this addiction is both psychological and “physical” (although, not physiological). It is psychological because students become comfortable using the software and will most likely continue to use it after they graduate since that’s the easiest thing to do. More importantly, however, the addiction is “physical” because if students’ work is all saved in proprietary formats (such as doc, pages, mp3, etc), then it can be extremely tedious and time consuming to convert all this work into open formats and break the addiction. From Wikipedia:

“If the information is stored in a way which the user’s software provider tries to keep secret, the user may own the information, but have no way to retrieve it except by using their software. If the user can’t retrieve it but the software manufacturer can — they have practical control of the user’s information. The fact that the user depends on a piece of software to retrieve the information stored in his/her proprietary format files gives almost guaranteed sales for future releases of that software, and is the basis for the vendor lock-in concept.” [4]

In contrast,

“The primary goal of open formats is to guarantee long-term access to data without current or future uncertainty with regard to legal rights or technical specification.” [5]

Stallman paints a grim dystopian picture of what using proprietary format might lead to:

“Programs that use treacherous computing will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If Microsoft, or the U.S. government, does not like what you said in a document you wrote, they could post new instructions telling all computers to refuse to let anyone read that document. Each computer would obey when it downloads the new instructions. Your writing would be subject to 1984-style retroactive erasure. You might be unable to read it yourself. ” [1; p. 118]

Does that remind anyone of the movie “I, Robot”, when all the robots (except one) were getting “updates” from the central computer?

Educational Reasons

One of the reasons that Stallman gives is somewhat limited in scope, but none-the-less very valid. He writes: “When students reach their teens, some of them want to learn everything there is to know about their computer system and its software. That is the age when people who will be good programmers should learn it.” [3]

If a student comes and asks me how Garage Band works, I can only answer that I don’t know and have no way of knowing (short of going to work for Apple). But if he or she asks me how Audacity [6] works (the software I used to edit the music for our musical), I can say: “I don’t know, but let’s go on their website, download the source code, study it, and find out…” Stallman argues that computer programmers become good programmers in the same way that writers become good writers: by reading and writing a lot (of computer code). [3]

The concept of free software is in direct alignment with the concept of learning by studying the work of others and expending on it. Contrasting this to proprietary software, Stallman writes: “In any intellectual field, one can reach greater heights by standing on the shoulders of others. But that is no longer generally allowed in the software field.” [1; p. 128] This is probably a reference to Isacc Newton, who wrote in 1676: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” [7], thus inventing Calculus to solve orbital mechanics problems…

Philosophical Reasons

This last thought leads us to consider deeper reasons for using free software in schools. The very concept of learning demands that such information be free of access in the same way that mathematical algorithms (such as the Standard Deviation) should not only be computed by calculators, but studied explicitly. When we use proprietary software, we send an implicit message that such secrecy of automation should be the norm. It’s akin to saying that it doesn’t matter if we don’t know how a mathematical algorithm works as long as the calculator can give us the answer somehow.

As educators, we want our students to become people of high character, to be critical thinkers, active learners, effective communicators, and community contributors. The final reason Stallman gives is, in my opinion, the most powerful as it relates to many of these five outcomes. Using free software allows our students the possibility of being real community contributors by writing code or documentation that is free for all to use and expend, or simply by promoting the use software and formats that are based on these values. These activities strengthen civic and moral leadership.[2]

Conclusion

We have a civic duty not to use proprietary software since it enslaves us. In a society that increasingly relies on the use of computer software, it becomes increasingly important that we be free to use it as we wish, free to modify it to suite our needs, free to share it with others to help them, and free to share our improvements with others. Our school system must be permeated with these values, and we must find the strength of character to do what’s right, even if it’s not the easiest.

The Next Step

Next week, I will be more pragmatic and outline a few ideas that I have to help us migrate into the free software world. It can’t happen overnight, but I believe that steps in the right direction can be taken without too much difficulties (although it will be some work). Until then, if some of you are curious about the GNU/Linux system, you’re welcome to come and it in action on my computer in 202…

Part 3a >>

References:

1. Stallman, Richard M. Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman, Boston, MA USA: GNU Press, 2002. <http://www.gnu.org/doc/book13.html>
2. Stallman, Richard M. Part of a talk given at Tsinghua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. May 15, 2008. <http://youtube.com/watch?v=V0MKGCBdNBk>
3. Stallman, Richard M. Why schools should exclusively use free software <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html>
4. Wikipedia: Proprietary format <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_format>
5. Wikipedia: Open format <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_format>
6. Audacity <http://audacity.sourceforge.net>
7. Wikipedia: Isacc Newton <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton>
8. Diagram by Chao-Kuei. Available under the terms of any of the GNU GPL v2 or later, the GNU FDL v1.2 or later, or the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike v2.0 or later. <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/category.jpg>
9. Truchon, Patrick, Free Software (Part 1: The Philosophy), <http://ptruchon.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/free-software-part-1-the-philosophy/>
10. Truchon, Patrick, Free Software (Part 3a: New Apps), <http://ptruchon.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/free-software-part-3a-new-apps/>

Advertisement