[gr2zr4]

Let me ask you: is Stallman talking about schools or businesses?

Just to be a little realistic: is there some "school activity" that makes using closed-software mandatory because there isn't an open-source alternative?

[December_Stars]

There's a few but those are quite prominent. Most notably I remember when I took Physics 1 we used some very specific software which name I do not remember but it was proprietary and only on Windows. Other than that almost every class can be done entirely with free software, at least in HS.

[gr2zr4]

> very specific software which name I do not remember but it was proprietary and only on Windows

Because it was the only available software for that specific course or because your teacher told you "this is the software, period"?

[December_Stars]

Pretty sure this was the only available software, iirc it was some Vernier related thing.

[Avamander]

Yeah, buying hardware that has vendor-locks will lock you into that vendor's software.

[dangus]

I think I provided plenty of reasons why a typical school wouldn’t deal with open source. It’s not about something being “mandatory” or not. Schools have budgets and employees just like a company, and they don’t have specialized staff skilled in technology with ample free time to do all the extra configuration and management that most open source software demands.

Sure, they can purchase hosted enterprise versions of open source software. Of course, enterprise open source solutions have to compete on the same playing field as proprietary solutions (and many of them do! E.g. Gitlab).

Why should a school district care if there’s source code available? What are they going to do with it?

RMS subscribes to the flawed idea that the legitimately admirable ideals of FSF/GNU are important to everyone because they’re important to him. The idea that someone in charge of any organization, school, or business is going to make purchasing decisions based on ideology is somewhat naive.

[Avamander]

> RMS subscribes to the flawed idea that the legitimately admirable ideals of FSF/GNU are important to everyone because they’re important to him.

The fact that some administration doesn't care about software freedoms at that point in time, does not make those freedoms void or not worthy of reminder.

It's like if you'd say that free speech isn't important because you have nothing to say. It's naive.

[dangus]

Personally, I don’t find the concept of free software to be analogous to free speech. I don’t think they are of the same level of importance, and aren’t even very similar concepts.