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>.
iPhone 3Gs Reveiw
Well, I got the iPhone 3Gs on Thursday morning after a week and a half of waiting. FedEx said that it would come Tuesday before 10:30 AM EDT but the customs in China held it up for a very long time. Let’s just say it shipped Thursday with priority direct shipping and didn’t get to the USA until late Tuesday evening. But enough with the griping, onto the actual phone. I would of done an unboxing video and speedtest comparison between the 3Gs and the 2G but I figured that there are enough of those already on the Internet that I don’t need to post those. If you really want to see them just goto YouTube and search for “iPhone 3GS Unboxing” and “iPhone 3GS vs. iPhone 2G or 3G”.
When I got the phone I was really excited and I opened the shipping box without scissors or a knife out of pure excitment. Inside was the iPhone 3Gs box, which looks a lot alike to the original iPhone and 3G’s boxes. I ripped the plastic wrap right off the box in no time at all. On the top was the 3Gs, never touched by uncovered human hands, then the Getting Started booklet and warentee information which also contained the “SIM removal tool” which is not a paper clip but a specialized tool for taking out the SIM card. Under that were the headphones, charging cable, and wall adapter. I was so glad to get a new pair of headphones and charging cable because my old charging cable was on it’s last wire and my old headphones were dieing.
I plugged the new phone right into my computer and called my Step-dad up so I could activate it. He gained control of my computer via LogMeIn. I then copyed over all of my music, apps and videos that I wanted on the phone. If I didn’t say so before, I got a black 16Gb iPhone. I still have 14Gb of free space. 
Already I had noticed it running a lot faster than my old iPhone. When the phone was syncing, the backup was made I’m guessing about 75% faster, and when it was done, I started up a game of Marble Blast Mobile, a very graphics intensive game that used to take at least 30 seconds to load the game on my old phone and takes about five to load on my new one. When I chose a level to start, the game loaded in about 2 seconds on my new phone. Once the game loaded I noticed how responsive and high frames per second it had. On my old phone it used to have about 15 fps and on my new phone it is about 30 fps. That is a 2x upgrade. That is all thanks to the 600mhz processor and 256Mb of RAM it has. To put it in perspective, it has the same power as a 8 year old IBM ThinkPad A21p laptop. Wow.
When I played a very CPU intensive game called TapDefence (a tower defence game), when I had all of the spots filled with arrow towers, the game was still very responsive. The GPS is another great feature of the 3Gs and 3G that the original iPhone didn’t have. Paired with the compass, it made a perfect pair. The compass isn’t actually an compass, but a magnometer, a digital compass. In maps, it can show you what direction you are facing and in the compass app it can give you your direction in degrees in true north and magnetic north.
The camera is an upgraded feature that was in both the original iPhone and the 3G but the 3Gs’s is a 3.0 Mpx autofocus camera that records 640×480 video at 30 fps. It also geotags your photos and video so you can remember where you took them. Here are a few example photos:
A lot of people dislike AT&T for what they say is crappy service, but I think otherwise. I get 5 bars 3G at my house which is outside of the city limits, it is a suburb with a lot of trees, and the city isn’t really that decent of a size. Also I’ve never had a dropped call anywhere and they have the most advanced GSM network in the US. They aren’t based on the outdated CDMA network that Verizon and Sprint run on.
Over all I’d give the iPhone 3Gs, the most advanced smartphone, an eleven apples out of ten; 11/10. 
Oh and I wrote this entire reveiw on the iPhone 3Gs. 
idk what to say
I’m sorry that I haven’t posted much recently, but there really hasn’t been much to post about. Once I get my new iPhone, I’ll do a review and a speed test difference between that and the first-gen iPhone but other than that my life has been pretty boring this summer. I’ve gone to a few camps, and sen my dad once but other than that I’ve been at home doing a bit of personal server work (for any techies who are reading this I threw Windows XP Pro onto an Thinkpad A21p and put XAMPP and iTunes [for a DAAP server] and put every possible open source free CMS onto it). I also went through about a thousand different themes for my website and found a few that I liked. That took about 6 hours.
Another thing I did was design about a dozen roller-coasters in NoLimits only about 3 of which whose videos will be posted to youtube. Other than that I haven’t done much. I’m writing this post right now because I really have nothing better to do as I’m waiting for my new phone which is on the opposite side of the world right now in Shenzhen, China
