Schools Need to Listen to the FSF
The FSF, a.k.a. the Free Software Foundation is the organization promoting the use of free and open source software. The people who push the software ideas as outlined in the Free Software Definition, which entitles many different values all of which are quotes below:
“Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program’s users have the four essential freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.”¹
At our school, and I am guessing most, if not all schools in the county and/or state in which I live in use copyrighted, closed-source, proprietary software that follow none of the above freedoms. I believe, and what the FSF and EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) are backing up this, is that the entire education system should have a complete overhaul in regards to the use of computers and their software. When it comes to the use of such software in the education system, it promotes many superior qualities in the students such as straight out of the education system, the students know that they are not restricted to the world of Microsoft Windows™ and open to other operating systems such as GNU/Linux. They will also tend to use more free and open software straight out of grade school².
Right now, the use of proprietary software such as Windows restricts the students ability to learn that there is a world beyond the big letter of XP, and the e with a circle around it to get to the internet. I did a small study in our school to see what other students knew about other elements to the software world other than Internet Explorer™ and Microsoft Windows XP™, most of the kids I interviewed only knew about those two pieces of software, and no others. One of a school’s many missions is that of a social standpoint, “to teach students to be citizens of a strong, capable, independent, cooperating and free society”. Its like if you push recycling in a school, then the odds are that kids will recycle more than not. In the same way, if you teach kids to use free and open source software, then they will be more likely to use that software outside of school When schools get tied into and restricted to the use of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer, they are just wasting money on the proprietary source code that is Windows and IE. Big companies such as Apple, and especially Microsoft are a lot like tobacco/cigarette companies in that they will make children grow up around mass marketed products to make the kids more plausible to buy that product or service². In the case of Apple and Microsoft, they mass-market proprietary operating systems and software to educators and schools so more kids will buy them when they become adults. Microsoft is especially guilty of this, as over 90% of the market of PC’s are running Microsoft Windows. Both tobacco companies and commercial technology companies are similar in more than one way. They will both offer their products at a discount to minors/students, and once those students become of age, the now-young adults have to pay full price for the products.
Although “free-software” does not necessarily mean “non-commercial” it is still free to copy and distribute it, even if you payed for it. This is known as copyleft meaning, “Allowing use, distribution, and modification on the condition that any redistributions or modifications also be licensed under the same condition and, in the case of computer software, are accompanied by source code“³. Copyleft in its most simple form states that you can copy and distribute a piece of software as long as you have any modifications or copies under the same license. A lot of free and open source software is licensed this way, under a license named the GNU General Public License, or (GNU) GPL. Some examples of such software are Firefox (Web Browser), Thunderbird (EMail Client), and Ubuntu (GNU/Linux Operating System). There are other licenses that have close to the same restrictions and freedoms as the GNU GPL, but may have other additions or subtractions such as the GNU LGPL (Lesser General Public License), which is basically a mixture of the GNU GPL and more laissez-faire style licenses such as the BSD and MIT licenses.
Free and open source software allows the students to learn exactly how said software works, and learn how to code such software. To learn how to write good code is to learning how to write good articles and studies. You have to read a lot to learn how to write good, and it is none different for computer code. Free software empowers a student to learn how the software works; how the mouse clicks and keyboard input translates to movement and actions on the screen, and what exactly is going on behind the scenes. Proprietary software shuns the interest in the students’ urge to learn. Its like saying, “Even though you are learning about the Emancipation Proclamation, you are not permitted to learn anything about President Lincoln”. Another way of putting it is rejecting one’s right to an education. What schools should start doing, especially as we enter the generation that grows up with the internet, is say “If you bring software to school, you must be ready to share it with every other student in the school”. But of course, the school must practice what they educate; they must be ready to share all of the software on their computers including the operating system.
To sum up, right now, the schools are contributing to the use of proprietary software like Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, iTunes, etc. and this needs to stop. The counties that govern these schools are spending thousands if not millions on proprietary software when they could be using that money to enhance the educational experience. Free and open software expands the students’ urge to learn how to code. I’m planing on presenting this case to my own local school board and hope that you will listen to my argument, take heed to the points I made in this article, and apply these in your everyday lives.
Credits:
I would like the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in aiding me by having the articles listed below online and available as a resource for my research.
¹”The Free Software Definition.” GNU Project. Free Software Foundation, Inc., 30
Mar. 2010. Web. 11 May 2010. <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
free-sw.html>.
²Stallman, Richard. Why Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software. GNU Project
& Free Software Foundation Inc., 15 Dec. 2009. Web. 11 May 2010.
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html>.
³”copyleft.” Wiktionary. Wikimedia Project , 7 Nov. 2009. Web. 11 May 2010.
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/copyleft>.
Stress is Killing Me!!
I really don’t know how to start this, but I will do the best that I can to explain. Trust me, if what I put here makes no sense whatsoever, it makes a lot more sense in my head. Right now my life is really quite stressful. Yes I know what you are thinking, “Well, so is every other 8th grader’s”. But I do much more in the way of stressful activities then most others in my grade. I also know that high school is going to be a bitch compared to middle school, but we will get out at 1:45 compared to 3:50. By the time I get home from school right now, it is usually around 5:00. To bring this back to the main point, after a 6-7 hour day at school (which entitles usually a test, fixing multiple Windows computer problems, and dealing with getting in classwork and homework on time) I’m already stressed enough to get a few gray hairs, add in a sister who either never listens to you or talks (yells) back at you when you try to help them with something, and dealing with usually a server or network problem that is keeping me from getting my DNS lookups working properly, email server wiping out all of your gmail, the router miss-routing internet traffic (usually forwarding my VPN traffic to my proxy server, not my VPN server), or my virtual machine host going down for no apparent reason. Add that all together and that is enough stress to kill a 14 year old (not literally, just using a hyperbole to stress (no pun intended) the amount of stress that I’m under). What all this is doing is making my grades drop, and giving me almost daily headaches. You might say the easy solution is to either take away my technology, have me not do any work with technology, or both. Well yes, those would be easy immediate solutions, but not very good long term ones. After 2-3 days without an interactive device, I start to become steeply depressed as my entire life is basically on them. I am NOT however addicted to said devices or the internet. These devices are just the way I communicate with people and society. In 7 years everyone will be using such devices minutely to communicate rather than the old fashioned way of doing things. I’m on the verge of holding a part-time job as a YouTube partner and am a beta tester for multiple companies which I cannot disclose. So you see my reasoning? Back to the issue at hand, there are my reasons for being stressed. What a lot of adults don’t see is actually fragile a teenager actually is. It’s like balancing an elephant on a knife edge. We are raging with hormones and emotions. Most people see girls as the more fragile ones, but in reality both are equally fragile. Girls are just more upfront about it. Sure, everybody is different, but we all have one thing in common; our passion to understand.
WW7FCFR3KP3C
My Refusal to use Windows XP
Ok, so right now my school, and 99% of other, upper, schools in our school district run Microsoft Windows XP. A ten year old operating system. I am a little guilty too, because I run WinXP on a 12 year old IBM Thinkpad A21p, designed for Windows 98, as an SSH server. That thing is now offically shut down as of now because there are so many parts failing, I’m now using a hacked router for the job. But back to the main topic. Now, I understand why this is happening, because most kids grew up around Windows. Oh, did I forget to mention the servers are running Windows 2000? Haha. dDos here I come. So yes, most kids grew up around Windows, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a choice in what OS (Operating System) we get to use. Right now, in my house there are 5 Macintosh’s & 2 Linux boxes. All backended by UNIX. A very powerful back-end. Ok, but what does that have to do with refusing to use WinXp at school. Well, I’m used to growing up around minisupercomputers, with great knowledge into the way *NIX OS’s work, and the terminal. Along with that power comes security. There are so many holes in Windows Server 2000, and Windows XP, it’s not even funny. They also *have* to run anti-virus software, otherwise they will get screwed up. So I’ve decided that I will either be able to use a *NIX OS at school, or not use a computer at all. This is my way of peacfully protesting against the forceful way of having to use Windows. Right now Windows has 93% of the market share, and I’d like that to change. Linux has *most of the Sever market share, and my website is running on it right now. Thats because it is free, **Open Source, and easy to customize. Right now, every school has to buy a separate computer for everything they get, and use the site license, which are expensive. If schools used ***Linux then they could just have little work stations that pull everything they need out of a centralized (set of) server(s). No expensive licenses, no expensive computers. There is even an education edition of the most user friendly Linux Distribution (Ubuntu), called Edbuntu, with a bunch of educational software preloaded and a free Office suite of tools, a word processor, presentation, spreadsheet, etc.
Next time I goto school, and they need to use the computers, I will plain out refuse to do so, because of the vulnerability of our information. If they give my a detention, referral, whatever, I will still stand my ground for the fight for choice. Microsoft has locked most schools into having to use Windows, and I believe that can change. I refuse to use Windows for anything other than dev work, testing, and gaming, from the time this gets posted to forever.
NOTE: THIS IS AN OPINION STAED BY TYLER DOHERTY AND TYLERJD.COM. THIS IS NOT A PETITION OF ANY FORM. THIS IS AN EXERCISE OF AMENDMENT ONE. RIGHT TO THE PRESS FREE SPEECH AND PEACEFULLY PROTEST. THIS IS ALSO NOT AN AD FPR LINUX AND NOT PAYED FOR BY THE LINUX COMMUNITY.
**Open Source Licensed under the GPL.
***Specifically Ubuntu Linux.
