[md5person]

What's wrong with having to pay for software? Or learning to accept that some software is proprietary? Or even with learning to use the right tool for the job, even if that "right tool" may sometimes come at a cost?

Students are required to pay for their education at MIT. Were the costs of this course offset with the costs of the non-free software used in an otherwise "standard course"?

People put immense effort into developing software. Is asking for compensation for one's time and effort somehow wrong?

And in many cases, proprietary/commercial software really does outperform the equivalent FOSS/Libre solution. Why are we teaching people to reach out for the suboptimal tools in these situations?

[Symbiote]

The second of the "four freedoms" of free software is

> The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish.

That is particularly important for students of computer science -- what better way to see how all kinds of software works than by reading and modifying its source code?

I'm surprised if a "standard course" doesn't mostly use free software. Mine certainly did, I remember only a single module where we used a commercial software package (something for hardware simulation). I've never felt that this has limited me in any way. One module had us modifying the Linux kernel.

[barking]

Who wrote the Four freedoms and how does he put food on the table?

[fsflover]

https://fsf.org

[barking]

If you're just some guy who writes and updates a piece of software for a living, what do you do then?

[vertex-four]

You find people willing to pay for your work, not for a license. If your ongoing work is not worth anything, why should you be paid extra for work you did in the past?

[barking]

>If your ongoing work is not worth anything, why should you be paid extra for work you did in the past?

If you write a piece of software that took you a year to write but buyers are only willing to pay $500 for then do (A) live on $500 or (b) try to sell to many buyers including some in the future? You seem to be saying (b) is out of the question but if it is who will write the software these people wish to buy?

[fsflover]

This is not a trivial question, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-sourc...

[logane]

Sussman means free as in freedom, not free as in beer :) (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)

[md5person]

> "Sussman means free as in freedom, not free as in beer :) (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)"

Sure, but conveniently enough, the software listed in the parent article [0] all happens to be "free as in beer".

What examples of "free as in freedom, but we had to pay for it before we could use it" software was used during the course?

[0] https://www.gnu.org/education/teaching-my-mit-classes-with-o...

[gspr]

I'm struggling to understand your reasoning. If the author had said "I only drink fair-trade coffee" would you also object if it happens to be the case that the fair-trade coffee is the cheapest type at his local supermarket?

[md5person]

This isn't an accurate analogy, is it?

We're discussing an educational institution with power and authority (MIT), which promotes drinking "free coffee", whilst simultaneously portraying it as somehow morally superior to "coffee one has to pay for" to consume.

Growing and selling coffee takes time, labour and effort - yet none of that is being reflected or accounted for when we choose to not pay for the coffee we consume.

Is this a sustainable approach? Does it promote "choosing the right tool for the job", or does it promote blind idealism ("free is better")? And why does a university, which takes exorbitant tuition fees, not prioritize the best software for the course (over the one that's merely free)?

[fsflover]

>whilst simultaneously portraying it as somehow morally superior

Free software is morally superior, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor.... It provides specific rights to the user so that the user is in control of their computing and not the developers.

> Is this a sustainable approach? Does it promote "choosing the right tool for the job", or does it promote blind idealism ("free is better")?

How to decide what is "blind idealism" and what is "normal idealism"?

[berkes]

You seem to fail to grasp the difference between "free as in beer" (gratis) and "free as in freedom" (libre).

Your coffee-response is all wrong: this is not about "free" coffee, about (not) having to pay for coffee, but about a moral stance on coffee: e.g. demanding the cafetaria only serves Fair Trade coffee, regardless of the price.

This is not about "having to pay for it" at all. The opposite really: running your own jitsi or BigBlueButton is probably more expensive than using the free tier of Teams, Zoom or Hangouts.

I run a large-ish jitsi instance: approx €50/month just for the VPS, my hours probably add another €2000/month to that.

[md5person]

> "You seem to fail to grasp the difference between "free as in beer" (gratis) and "free as in freedom" (libre)."

Why are we going back-and-forth about this again?

I previously asked whether there were concrete examples of software used during the course that were "free as in freedom" but NOT "free as in beer", and the response to my question was that no such examples were available.

It's the actions that matter here, and the bottom line is that they weren't intending to pay for anything to begin with. And by that, they were abdicating the "it's not about the money" argument, in my honest opinion.

[gspr]

> promotes drinking "free coffee", whilst simultaneously portraying it as somehow morally superior to "coffee one has to pay for" to consume.

The price does not enter into Sussman's argument. Maybe it could, given how students tend to be short on money and abhor paying for expensive textbooks, but it doesn't.

> Growing and selling coffee takes time, labour and effort - yet none of that is being reflected or accounted for when we choose to not pay for the coffee we consume.

In my coffee analogy, the promotion of the fair-trade alternative would be based on the fair-trade mechanism for ensuring the lower levels of the production chain receive a fairer share of the income. Whether or not the author pays less or more at the store is irrelevant to the argument.

> Is this a sustainable approach?

For this class? Almost surely!

For some people (e.g. me)? To a large extent (things aren't black and white). Apart from (the admittedly large chunk of) non-free Javascript run by the websites I visit, and some firmware, my computing world runs entirely on FOSS.

For absolutely everyone in every situation? Surely not. That's OK.

Really, the only point that matters a lot here is the first one.

> Does it promote "choosing the right tool for the job", or does it promote blind idealism ("free is better")?

It seems to me to also promote the fact that FOSS is far more compatible with academic culture and behavior. While indeed you may have to pay publishers for access to articles (luckily a practice that's on decline!), you certainly have complete freedoms to build on the work presented in those articles for your own research!

I'd go so far as to say that no closed tool can ever be "right for the job" in an academic research setting! (Although one sometimes does have to compromise when no adequate alternatives exist, especially when it comes to lab equipment – but in the CS world things are a lot better.)

> And why does a university, which takes exorbitant tuition fees, not prioritize the best software for the course (over the one that's merely free)?

I don't understand what MIT's tuition fees have to do with this.

[md5person]

> "In my coffee analogy, the promotion of the fair-trade alternative would be based on the fair-trade mechanism for ensuring the lower levels of the production chain receive a fairer share of the income. Whether or not the author pays less or more at the store is irrelevant to the argument."

But for there to be any form of income trickling down production chains, someone has to be willing to pay something for the services they consume. Is this controversial in any way?

[kleiba]

> What examples of "free as in freedom, but we had to pay for it before we could use it" software was used during the course?

None. But I really don't get your point.

[woofie11]

Your question is missing the point, but to give an answer:

Sussman taught the first edX course, 6.002x. Agarwal took credit for it (since he shot the videos and was the face), but Sussman did the plurality of the work, followed by Terman, by Mitros, and then by Agarwal.

Open edX is free-as-in-beer but not free-as-in-price.

[m463]

I actually think that free software is an excellent choice for a classroom because not only can the students examine how everything works, they can take a copy home with them and modify it.

I wish I had had that opportunity when I studied computer science, because my tools were treated as a sort of "magical black box" with no visibility.

The programs we wrote in class were toy programs, and there was no sort of "reality check" for how our editor or compiler or any other tool was actually written.

[dependenttypes]

> And in many cases, proprietary/commercial software really does outperform the equivalent FOSS/Libre solution

And in most cases, it does not. Why are we teaching people to reach out for the suboptimal tools in these situations?

[berkes]

A large part here is the "sales". Commercial software, almost by definition, has a sales team that ensures their software is bought by universities, companies, governments etc.

Non-commercial software does not have this in that sense. It may have advocates who, out of sheer enthousiasm, bring software into such universities, companies and governments, but hardly ever an actual sales.

And since non-commercial software is largely FLOSS, whereas commercial software if most often proprietary, we see that, simply through sales, the proprietary alternatives are used far more often.

Regardless of any technical merits. Technical superiority hardly "sells" software, sales teams do that. Unfortunately, I might add.

[chottocharaii]

No one objects to people being paid to make software.

What if people were paid through public grants, or paid well through the welfare state; instead of through the legal scarcity provided by intellectual property?

[aww_dang]

Or even voluntary contributions of time or money?

Typically those who utilize open software for commercial ends contribute code. Opensource contributors are hired by companies using their software.

[aww_dang]

Non sequitur

You're assuming a generalization which is not present in the article. People can disagree on the merits of paid software and still agree that teaching using open solutions is has benefits. One does not necessarily follow the other.