Hey Alex, Alex Kozak <[email protected]> writes:
> I'd love to have a conversation about this at the conference... would be > interesting to hear everyone's perspective. I think this is a great debate > to have. > Unfortunately I missed the conference this year. Did any conversation about it happen? > John you know I agree with the ideals of free software, but I think I have a > more pragmatic view when it comes to Google. Does the increased risk to > "corporate interference" and reduced autonomy outweigh the potential > benefits of these technologies? For a school without any collaboration > systems, and little capacity to deploy one, the Google option would clearly > be a net win for education and the university's mission to educate. And it > would be a win for free culture in that the capabilities for collaboration > and learning presented by the internet are being harnessed by the > institutions who could most benefit from their use. > I understand the appeal of this argument, but it accepts the status quo as a given, ignoring the leadership role that universities have (imperfectly) had, and what they are capable of. The university has the choice to either be part of the demand for freedom or to instead support lack of freedom and expect someone else to take the leadership role. I sure am glad universities continued the growth of the Internet and standardized email instead of going the direction of private AOL-like networks. As Asheesh points out, to require Google Services is to require student and faculty disclosure of their academic work and communications to both the government and a corporation. This does strike me as a much more sinister kind of corporate interference than hanging sponsorship banners up in the student union or the like. It also means relying on code that no one at the university has ever seen, so it means simply trusting a corporation to do the right thing. I think your way of framing this also creates a much wider technology gap than there is. Google services obviously have features that add appeal, but let's be honest about what the actual damage to the university's mission from not making their use *mandatory* is, and let's also remember that the largest successful collaborative writing and research project in history is run using exclusively free software... > I definitely agree that other things being equal a floss solution is > preferable over Google. And think it's even inevitable that free software > will compete with Google apps-like services. But in the meantime should > schools not be encouraging the use of new technology until the floss > solution is as optimal as Google? > There's no "in the meantime" in the current way these decisions are being made -- to adopt Google services is to actively undercut and work against the demand for free software solutions (which may or may not be services in the traditional sense). Universities are large and slow. If they change to Google now, they aren't going to want to change again to a free software system in 3 years, even if an awesome one does exist. We also can't impose the "in the meantime" rationale we wish were there on the decision -- when the decision is made based on cost, that's the rationale -- not this desire you're expressing to benefit collaborative or free culture projects. Failing to oppose a decision made on a poor rationale simply because an alternate rationale could justify it better is a dangerous path to take. When a decision is at best pro-free-culture because of incidental side effects, that's a deceptive and often harmful kind of win. If universities were *actually* saying, "We're going to use Google services now, because we need that functionality to support collaboration, but we'll continue to support development of free software alternatives with an eye toward re-acquiring our academic independence in 2015," then this would be a much different discussion. >From what I've seen, that's not what they're saying. What they're saying is more akin to, "It's cheaper, and software is just part of the infrastructure, like the air conditioning, and Google is popular." That's not something we should be okay with. -- -John Sullivan -http://wjsullivan.net -GPG Key: AE8600B6 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
