Free software

I have been experimenting with a range of '''free software''' for university teaching, research, and service. Its not that proprietary software is necessarily inherently evil (although it is selfish), its just that the free software and open source software movements offer a fundamentally better model for creating a fair and sustainable human and natural world. If you're in need of convincing, I recommend Richard Stallman's "Why schools should use exclusively free software" as a starting point.

The ways in which people go about switching to free software vary and depend on individual circumstances. Some people go "cold turkey". I'm moving slowly and enjoying doing so.

So, I'm currently using Windows XP and at various stages of transitioning teaching-related applications to free software. Each semester I switch over more functionality to free software and somewhere down the track I'll transition to a free software operating system. For example, this semester I'm using Open Office Impress instead of Microsoft Office Powerpoint because it produces .odp (open document presentation) files.

A particularly strong consideration for me is also to strive to teach using tools which students can freely obtain ongoing access to, beyond their short-term period of access to the institutional IT system. Thus, educators I believe need to be teaching more within the external context of students' lives, and less within the artificial setting of the university.

Australian student fees and costs have increased greater than CPI in the past two decades, so we should not be compounding the issue by locking students into being primarily dependent on proprietary, commericial software during their professional education - especially when there are reasonable alternatives available.

Prescribing proprietary software serves to constrain and disempower, and is indicative of ivory towerism in bed with commercialism.

Or we could say, a plain lack of empathy which arises from treating students and staff as commodities, rather than as people learning how to be contribute effectively to society.

Education should be a liberating exercise. Or maybe I've just been reading too much John Dewey and listening to too many Richard Stallman speeches.

Free software

See also