Re: Forcing students to use nonfree network services and software as a topic of a future campaign
Thanks Paul for this elaborate response. I totally agree. ___ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
Re: Forcing students to use nonfree network services and software as a topic of a future campaign
On Friday 29. November 2019 23.02.39 Nico Rikken wrote: > > Privacy: schools migrating their infrastructure to cloud SaaS > companies, with questionable licenses. I managed to see this more closely again at a former, then current, now former employer: employees and students get the opportunity to sign up for various cloud services, agreeing to the terms at their own peril. Naturally, if someone signs up for a Microsoft cloud service and then publishes, say, an event where the sign-up link is via that service, the consequence is that other people are then forced to use that service and to have a relationship with Microsoft. Alongside privacy, this also has a cost for the institution in terms of needing to integrate such services with identity management systems and other institutional services. Arguably, such expenditure would be better directed towards Free Software solutions. > Independence: what good is it learning skills if you learn them on > proprietary software. Sure it might an industry standard (e.g. Adobe > Creative suite), but your skills now depend partly on the policy of the > software vendor. Back in the 1990s when I was still using proprietary platforms, one of which being significant in the UK primary and secondary education sectors, there was always much made of "industry standard" products which also happened to be proprietary, with it being said that children/students shouldn't waste their time on products that aimed at the educational market (either explicitly as educational products or being more generally useful products that happened to be written for platforms popular in education). Children/students were apparently supposed to learn what was used in "business". The observations that people made rather often in response were that skills should be independent of products and that "education is not training". Naturally, the latter observation applies less to vocational institutions, but I think that even courses that seek to train individuals should have a breadth of more than a single product so that those individuals acquire a degree of versatility in their vocation. It also did not help advocates of "industry standard software" that in some areas DOS/Windows programs lagged behind various competing products in the early 1990s and would have given little benefit to those learning them upon finally completing their education and meeting the "real world" or "industry". Indeed, with product evolution being dictated by vendors and with a continual need for training being cultivated by vendors, there is a strong argument for a broad exposure to concepts, techniques and for students to be confident and adaptable. > Reuse: educational institutions should help education. And having > material that can be shared freely, advances education as a whole. > > Improvement: students can actively contribute to learning materials, to > improve it for next generations of students. I obviously agree with these points, in contrast to the depressing trend of educational institutions being cultivated as "innovation" machines seeking to minimise sharing so that they may monetise their activities. Of course, there is a broader matter involved here: that of being forced to use specific and proprietary products to conduct activities that are a natural part of functioning as a private individual. Why should people need to have a Google account to access materials within an institution? Why should they need to download an "app" to interact with public agencies or services (or private entities providing what are effectively public services)? Indeed, why should anyone even need to sign up for an "app" store, operated by a corporation funnelling data and money offshore, to interact with a private business if that person and that business reside in the same location? One might have thought that a business requiring an individual to enter into a non-transient relationship with another business in order to complete a transaction would actually be illegal under competition law. Maybe such issues would be a good subject for a campaign, even if it might be too substantial a topic for the FSFE by itself. Paul ___ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
Re: Forcing students to use nonfree network services and software as a topic of a future campaign
On Sun, 2019-11-24 at 18:25 +0200, Demetris Karayiannis wrote: > Hi Nico, > > thanks for reading > > > Personally I believe we already have so many different topics to > > focus > > on (governmental policies, PMPC, Open Standards, Router freedom, > > DRM > > exemptions, eduction, etc.) and so I like to align my efforts with > > the > > FSFE campaigns to have a greater impact. Doing a few things right, > > rather than a lot of things badly. But of course you are free to > > initiate an effort yourself. > > Yes, that is more than fair enough. I was already aware of that, and > in > my original email I extended the proposal to readers of the list > working > on the issue beyond their FSFE affiliation. > Even with the idea for a campaign set aside, I'm looking forward to > reading more people's takes on the topic. Thanks for clarifying. I certainly support the cause. There are multiple arguments to be made: Privacy: schools migrating their infrastructure to cloud SaaS companies, with questionable licenses. Independence: what good is it learning skills if you learn them on proprietary software. Sure it might an industry standard (e.g. Adobe Creative suite), but your skills now depend partly on the policy of the software vendor. Reuse: educational institutions should help education. And having material that can be shared freely, advances education as a whole. Improvement: students can actively contribute to learning materials, to improve it for next generations of students. > > From your writing I get the impression that this was an incident > > uncommon at your institution. > > It was probably unwise to make so much of my email about this > specific > instance. > It was one of the least problematic examples of forced use of > proprietary software > in academia. But it was the incident that sparked the idea, that's > why I > brought it up. Alright, than that troubled your message. But thanks for clarifying your intent. Kind regards, Nico ___ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
Re: Forcing students to use nonfree network services and software as a topic of a future campaign
Hi Nico, thanks for reading Personally I believe we already have so many different topics to focus on (governmental policies, PMPC, Open Standards, Router freedom, DRM exemptions, eduction, etc.) and so I like to align my efforts with the FSFE campaigns to have a greater impact. Doing a few things right, rather than a lot of things badly. But of course you are free to initiate an effort yourself. Yes, that is more than fair enough. I was already aware of that, and in my original email I extended the proposal to readers of the list working on the issue beyond their FSFE affiliation. Even with the idea for a campaign set aside, I'm looking forward to reading more people's takes on the topic. From your writing I get the impression that this was an incident uncommon at your institution. It was probably unwise to make so much of my email about this specific instance. It was one of the least problematic examples of forced use of proprietary software in academia. But it was the incident that sparked the idea, that's why I brought it up. Best, Demetris -- Demetris Karayiannis Homepage URL: dkarayiannis.eu ___ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
Re: Forcing students to use nonfree network services and software as a topic of a future campaign
Hi Demetris, That is unfortunate. Personally I believe we already have so many different topics to focus on (governmental policies, PMPC, Open Standards, Router freedom, DRM exemptions, eduction, etc.) and so I like to align my efforts with the FSFE campaigns to have a greater impact. Doing a few things right, rather than a lot of things badly. But of course you are free to initiate an effort yourself. From your writing I get the impression that this was an incident uncommon at your institution. Considering this case is about a single file, perhaps you could have got it from another student as a pragmatic solution in the moment? And considering that there is a proper solution provided by the insitution, you can ask the lecturer why the file wasn't uploaded there. And go so far as to make a complaint within the institution about this incident. More general speaking I would try to talk with the lecturer and explain why this is important to you, and work out a solution that works for the future. Perhaps there was a reason the lecturer couldn't upload the file. But putting the file in an e-mail could have been a non-Google workaround. (I'm not trying to be pedantic here. In my days in Uni I have failed an exam as some PowerPoint slides didn't render properly in LibreOffice and so I missed some information. From that point onwards I got a friend to convert them to PDF's. And I agreed with a lecturer to use Scilab instead of Matlab in class as long as I used Matlab in the exam, not to confuse the exam supervisors). Yes it is worthwile to stride for the issue at large. But for your own interest it is often best to start the conversation in the small. Kind regards, Nico On Thu, 2019-11-21 at 20:14 +0200, Demetris Karayiannis wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm sure many of you are aware that students at all levels of > education > are forced to use nonfree software, and more recently, nonfree > network > services in order to receive their education and fulfil the course > requirements (see https://www.gnu.org/education/ for prior writings > on > this). > > I'm having a bad day today because I'm currently a studying at a > programme that is an exception to the above, with a lot of focus on > using free software. But for some reason, a tutorial today was behind > a > Google sign-in wall and the lecturer didn't want to export the > tutorial > (which is just a jupyter notebook file) and upload it on the > existing > learning management system for students to download and study. > > This led me to imagine some possible ways in which the FSFE and/or > other > organisations in the free software movement could try to work on > this > topic: > > 1. A survey of students and instructors about their experiences > and/or > policies in mandatory nonfree software and nonfree network services > in > university classrooms (which can establish the magnitude of the > problem, > and help identify ways to change this) > > 2. A campaign for instructors to pledge not to mandate the use of > nonfree software and network services and/or eliminate them from the > curriculum of their courses > > Apologies for the hastily written email, but if anyone in the list > is > interested in this topic, I'd love to here more. > > Best, > Dem > ___ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
