[zelphirkalt]

Obviously he is a great (one of the best?) teachers. Having the lecture use free software only, shows he also cares about ethics at his work. I think that makes him a better teacher. Far too few people in CS care about the ethics side as well.

[gspr]

> Far too few people in CS care about the ethics side as well.

Unrelated to this story, but on the topic of ethics in CS: I found the decision of Joe Redmon [1] extremely brave. (If you don't know who he is, he's the principle original author of YOLO, and could easily have had a stellar CV career. Also, his papers are just amazing reads with tons of humor.)

[1] https://syncedreview.com/2020/02/24/yolo-creator-says-he-sto...

[2] https://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/

[marta_morena_24]

Yeah right, because MIT is such a cheap school, it totally is required to use free software, because that is going to make a difference. Instead, MIT should make sure that students get their software and materials free of charge, not that the material or software itself is free (just because students on scholarships or alike may not have the money). They should use what is best for the students and not what is best to support some ideology.

[kragen]

Free software is a matter of freedom, not price. But your comment contradicts itself.

Your posited opposition between "what is best for the students" and "what is best to support some ideology" is without foundation — different ideologies differ precisely in that they make different claims about what is best for people, such as students. Whatever set of claims you endorse about "what is best for the students" constitutes an ideology.

Now, it may be that there is no objectively correct ideology — that, for example, it's just as valid to celebrate the mass human sacrifice of the Khmer Rouge killing fields as an inspiring example of class struggle, as Pol Pot did, as to deplore it as a violation of fundamental human rights. I do not believe this, but some people do.

But you do not seem to be taking such a purely moral-relativist position — instead, you are arguing that MIT "should make sure that students get their software and materials free of charge" and "should use what is best for the students". That is, you are attempting to promote your own ideology about how MIT should teach its classes, arguing that MIT should prefer your ideology to Gerald Jay Sussman's ideology and, implicitly, that MIT's administration should order him to choose different software with which to teach his classes. You are attempting to camouflage your attempted imposition of your own ideology on MIT under a dishonest implicit claim that your own point of view is free of any ideology.

As it happens, MIT does not adhere to your ideology; instead it adheres to an ideology known as "academic freedom", which holds, among other things, that professors and other instructors have fairly wide latitude to choose their manner of teaching, the material they will teach, and the points of view they will express, which easily extends to the choices in question. When the modern ideology of academic freedom was forged in, mostly, the German universities of the 18th and 19th century, it brought them to the frontier of human knowledge and made them the leaders in advancing it; nowadays many of the universities most faithful to this ideology are in the United States, but the principles are the same.

Your call for MIT to abandon its principles and suppress academic freedom, mendaciously cloaked behind a spurious claim of ideological neutrality, is deplorable.

You should not have posted it.

(To preempt some comments, not only do I not teach at MIT or any other university, I've never attended MIT and I didn't even graduate from college; and MIT, roughly speaking, bullied a friend of mine to suicide. This is not about group loyalty.)

[bildung]

> celebrate the mass human sacrifice of the Khmer Rouge killing fields as an inspiring example of class struggle, as MIT professor Noam Chomsky did

This obviously never happened. What Chomsky and Herman instead did was criticizing the media portrayals of the Khmer Rouge vs. the US bombings that took place at the same time, killing 600000 civilians in Cambodia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal).

[kragen]

I appreciate the correction. You are partly correct; Chomsky did not in fact celebrate the sacrifices, but rather urged people to doubt their reality, in 1977, at which point doubting them was perhaps more reasonable than it is today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom... https://chomsky.info/19770625/

That article was written before the worst of the killings happened in 1978, though it still seems outrageous to me that it blames the bad conditions in Cambodia on US bombings killing water buffalo; Chomsky touts "the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it" and describes reports that “virtually everybody saw the consequences of [summary executions] in the form of the corpses of men, women and children rapidly bloating and rotting in the hot sun,” as "fallacious", saying that they "collapse[] under the barest scrutiny".

The US bombings were indeed terrible, but (as the page you link explains) they did not kill anywhere close to the 600k people you claim, and they happened earlier than the Khmer Rouge killing fields, not at the same time.

I have corrected my comment to instead make the more defensible, though still perhaps controvertible, claim that Pol Pot celebrated the sacrifices in that way.

[systemvoltage]

I found your response, regardless of the stance, absolutely rude.

It’s important to understand and try to find why that person is thinking this way than to shut them down in the manner you have, again with the same subjective ideology that the parent is commenting on.

[kragen]

> It’s important to understand and try to find why that person is thinking this way

Yeah? Try it, then.

[systemvoltage]

On HN, as the topic gets more divisive, please be nice and respectful.

Think about, the other person is not stupid to feel so passionate or strongly about something. There must beSome reason. Peel the layers until you get to the bottom of it. IMO, that’s so much more interesting to study than to ignore them.

Humanity gets better when we try to get out of a local optima. When we do don’t explore radical voices, and instead ignore them, we have no possible way to wiggle out of the uncanny valley. This refactoring if you will, of the human progress guided by logical reasoning, understanding of trade offs, gathering empirical data and studying behavior is paramount to a peaceful and harmonious society.

I urge you to please listen to others and ask them why they think that way. What are the pros and cons of a particular approach. Be honest and seek truth.

[kragen]

My criticism of our other interlocutor is certainly not that they are stupid. It is precisely that their rhetoric is dishonest, sabotaging precisely the dialectical process you claim to be concerned with fostering. If that's your concern, shouldn't you be criticizing them for their dishonest framing, not me?

Moreover, what they are attacking is that Sussman is enabling his students to study the software the course is run on, so they can understand its tradeoffs and guide human progress by logical reasoning, rather than treating the software as impenetrable black boxes they are forbidden to investigate and powerless to change; and they are attacking MIT's adherence to the ideology of academic freedom, one of the most effective ways to explore radical voices, get out of local optima, and seek truth.

I notice that you still haven't posted a response to their comment, whether criticizing their dishonesty as your stance implies you should, or attempting to understand their point of view as you are urging me to do. If you think it's important to find out why that person is thinking this way, then why are you making no effort to do so, instead attempting to influence me?

My best guess is that you're just feeding me a line of bullshit that you think will persuade me, rather than saying anything you sincerely believe, since your behavior in this thread is precisely the opposite of the behavior you are advocating.

Or, more briefly: "Yeah? Try it, then."

[dmonitor]

> It made available licenses for various nonfree programs, but I objected to them on grounds of principle.

This was the second sentence of the post

[raxxorrax]

I think every developer knows that without open source their abilities would be much worse. That isn't an ideology.

[Phlogi]

It's not about the price, it's about the freedom I assume. Having free of charge proprietary software for students is a different approach. I wouldn't call it unethical though.

[Conan_Kudo]

Why wouldn't you? Using software that restricts your freedom to use, modify, and share in the pursuit of advancing the human understanding of the universe around us seems to be short-sighted. Free Software gives everyone the equal opportunity to leverage the same tools and practices to do research, development, and further our understanding of our world. In most cases, proprietary software does not.

[rimliu]

Wow. Please, explain, how writing a book in Libre Office instead of say, Pages, changes some physicists ability to research, development and furthering our understanding of our world. And no, free software does not give anything to everyone. A very small percentage of the world population could make use of the benifits it being open cource, and even smaller ever will.

[kragen]

What's "Pages"?

[PeterisP]

Despite all the advantages of free software, often it is very useful to use a particular proprietary tool and often it is very useful to learn (and thus, teach) how to use a particular proprietary tool, and there's nothing unethical about doing that useful thing instead of refusing to do because it involves proprietary software. Some people would refuse to use proprietary software as a matter of principle, and that's also a valid ethical choice, but it's not the only ethical choice.

Calling an action unethical is a strong accusation. It's very rude to call an action or a person unethical unless the wrongness of that action goes way beyond merely not taking advantage of an opportunity to facilitate some ethical goal, calling it unethical implies some active wrongdoing instead of failing or refusing to take what you consider the most beneficial choice.

[kragen]

You seem to be committing the same error I called out in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23475012, although far less egregiously: advocating a form of moral relativism almost everyone would reject, while urging people to take some actions and not others based on normative arguments. If you applied the same reasoning consistently, you would end up saying, "Some people would call an action unethical despite the potential of offending the actor, and although thus speaking out is also a valid ethical choice, it's not the only ethical choice." Unless you're making some kind of fine distinction between classes of undesirable acts that I'm missing?

[PeterisP]

Okay, I'll try to be a bit specific on what I'm asserting:

1. For any scale of "ethicality" what matters is not only the actual scale, but also the "zero point". On a hypothetical scale of -10 to +10, there's a lot of choices that are not the most ethical choice providing the most utility or making no sins or whatever model of ethics is used, but are "above zero" - so they are ethical actions (ethically permitted actions) despite not being most ethical choices. Most things that we do fall in the range between, say, 0 and +5 on that arbitrary, hypothetical scale - they're ethically permitted but far from the "most ethical" possible acts. E.g. it's ethical to try and follow the effective altruism movement principles; but it's also definitely ethical to perfrom ordinary altruism.; it's ethical to abandon your life and go to a poor country to feed starving people, but it's also ethically permissible to not do that and simply live a good life. Otherwise we might as well say that everyone who's not devoting their life to charity is unethical, and that's not what the word means.

2. To adjust for moral relativism - there are many moral standards, however, even in moral relativism we (or at least I) expect them to be mostly aligned. E.g. what's +7 for you might be +10 or +5 for me, but it's very unlikely to be -7. If someone's personal ethics or religious persuasion allows and even mandates them to, for example, rape and kill babies, then we simply mark their relative morals as unacceptable (unaligned?) and invalid despite generally accepting some relativism. And relativism is tricky - we do accept some relativism - if someone asserts that not following their exact moral code to the letter (which most of the society doesn't do) automatically makes someone (e.g. most of the society) immoral and evil, then we consider their morals, or at least that part of their morals, as not aligned with widely accepted morals, extremist, not valid, and ignore it. I.e. the "privileges" of moral relativism seem to be granted only to those who also grant others the same privilege.

So I'm working with the expectation of not-absolutely-objective but still somewhat aligned moral principles, making an assumption that if something seems definitely permissible for me; i.e. not even close to 0, far from the (admittedly fuzzy) line of what's permitted and required in my opinion; then for others with different-but-still-reasonable ethical priorities it might be, at worst, mildly discouraged but not breaking any major taboos.

3. Calling someone unethical or immoral is a strong accusation. It is justified if and only if the action goes "below zero" on that scale; if the agent has broken some taboos or significant moral principles. It's not appropriate if the agent has merely acted unoptimally or "less ethically" as they could. It's appropriate if the agent has failed in some ethical duty, if some evil act was done, but it's not appropriate if the agent has failed in some ethical "opportunity", if they did not do something that is nice but not morally mandated.

4. Teaching someone how to use an useful proprietary tool is not unethical. Teaching someone useful skills is a good act that helps that student, does not impose any undue harm, does not violate any person's rights or moral imperative, it's strictly "above zero" on a moral scale even if it would have been more good or "more ethical" to do something else e.g. teach some free software instead. All the arguments made above for ethicalness of teaching free software instead of proprietary tools go into the category of "it would have been better to do that instead", there was no argument made that teaching proprietary tools is actually harmful or evil, and that there's some specific harm to society that outweighs the benefit to the student. So I did not see any actual justification why the act should be considered unethical (only assertion that doing something else might be better), but there was an assertion that anyone doing so is unethical.

5. Unjust accusations are harmful. It's offensive, harming people without appropriate reason or justification, and harming people does violate most moral principles. I assume that this is not what's being debated here - I would assume that the grandparent poster would agree that unjust accusations are harmful but would rather contest/debate the position is that these accusations are just; they might question my #4 assertion, but not this one - however, I might be mistaken, of course.

6. I'm not asserting that you should not call out unethical actors because that would offend them; there's nothing ethically wrong with just or justified accusations even if they turn out erroneous because of a honest mistake. But I am asserting that in any reasonable debate it's appropriate, polite and even an ethical imperative to give some benefit of doubt (not "innocent before proven guilty" beyond all doubt criteria, we're not proposing to execute or imprisin someone, but at least some reasonable benefit of doubt) before making any accusations. This requires some serious consideration whether that act is actually unethical (according to the criteria of #1) or it's merely less-than-optimal e.g. failing to signal some support to an ethical movement.

7. I am asserting that making unjust accusations of unethicality is itself unethical (i.e. not just suboptimal, but "below 0 on that scale", breaking moral imperatives). This is a much wider issue than this debate on free software, I've seen such accusations of unethicality very frequently misused (IMHO even intentionally) in recent political debates on both side, and I believe that this misuse of accusations is harmful behavior.

Going back to your particular example of the statement "Some people would call an action unethical despite the potential of offending the actor, and although thus speaking out is also a valid ethical choice, it's not the only ethical choice.", it is something that seems reasonable to me - it's permissible to call out unethical actors (though note the abovementioned difference between calling out actually unethical actors versus claiming that an actor is unethical without any grounds to do so), and it's permissible to not call out unethical actors; I don't see any contradiction there.

[kerkeslager]

Well, first off, in this context they're using free=libre not free=gratis. (Free as in freedom, not free as in free beer).

Second, there are a lot of contexts where MIT's educational materials are available for free (gratis). I've taken a lot of MIT courses over the years and never paid a dime except to purchase a hard copy of SICP.

[rorykoehler]

What's best for students is what's best for society too. That means open standards and open source.

[Shared404]

Honestly, imho of course, open standards are even more important than open source. At least with open standards anyone can make their own implementation.

At least until we reach the bloat level of the web.

[httpsterio]

Honestly, it's not necessarily feasible to run all the tools one might have at the university and if the only way of doing science is by using expensive apps only available to rich individuals or companies that are well off, well its quite limiting in who can gain an attractive amount of experience working with it.

It also sets a baseline for every student and prepares them for a future where science is made to be shared and part of that is using tools and work flows that can be copied around the world.

[ghaff]

Personally I think it's a great practice to default to FOSS, whether community bits or commercially supported for a variety of reasons. However:

>if the only way of doing science is by using expensive apps only available to rich individuals or companies that are well off, well its quite limiting in who can gain an attractive amount of experience working with it.

The same might be said of all the expensive hardware and other facilities required for many STEM (and even other) courses. Electron microscopes and MRI machines (and exotic computer hardware) are scarce resources however you look at it.

[corty]

Machines are naturally scarce, you need resources and labour to build them for each machine. Software is artificially scarce, the reproduction cost for software is almost zero.

So while it is understandable that hardware will be limiting and that cannot really be helped, software should never be a limiting factor in education imho. One can never remove all obstacles, but the easily avoidable ones should be avoided.

Btw., similar arguments apply to books, there is no reason digital versions of books used in education shouldn't be free (as in beer and freedom).