[TOS] Use of proprietary software in colleges and universities

Luis Ibanez luis.ibanez at kitware.com
Sun Jun 27 17:40:20 UTC 2010


Jeff, Matt,


Thanks a lot for your comments.

This is quite an interesting discussion.

--

Do we have already an agenda for the TOS BoF ?
It will great if we could include this as a topic there.

--

I'm sticking to my opinion in the abstract,
although, to Matt's point, it certainly needs
a disclaimer stating that:

    "It simply reflects my personal views,
     and not the views of OSCON, TOS,
     Kitware or RPI".



I would like to include in the talk, the alternative
opinions that you two have expressed here. This
will encourage discussion during the Q&A part of
the talk.


The current draft of the presentation is available at:
http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/OSCON_2010/Educating_the_next_generation_of_FOSS_developers#Presentation


The direct link is:
[
http://public.kitware.com/pub/itk/Presentations/EducatingTheNextGenerationOfFOSSDevelopers_OSCON_2010.odp
]


The presentation is far from ready,
but this is a practical exercise of
"release early, release often"...


----


I guess Matt's points are that:

1) The financial interests of students must be taken
     into account when we propose curriculum
     modifications.

2) The benefits / drawbacks of every approach should
    be based on experimental evidence that must be
    verifiable by third parties.


and Jeff's points are that:


1) Using proprietary tools do not necessarily prevent
    students from learning specifics of "how things work".

2) In some cases open source tools are better aligned
    with the financial interests of students.



Is that a fair summary ?


I apologize for oversimplifying your statements,
but unfortunately this is something that we will
have to squeeze in a single slide.


Please let me know if you would like to phrase
it differently, or if I fully missed any of your points.



     Thanks


           Luis



---

PS. Jeff: Thanks for the link, I already added it
to the slide listing the use of low-cost proprietary
software.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 9:42 PM, Jeff Osier-Mixon <jefro at jefro.net> wrote:

> I think Matthew's tone may be a bit harsh, but there are some good points
> in his message.
>
> I attended college in an era before open-source software was popular.  In
> the computer science courses I took, I'd have to say one of the few positive
> things I learned was the inner workings of computer hardware (von Neumann
> FTW) and assembly language.  In undergraduate college, when one is first
> really learning, I think there is little sense in bogging someone down with
> a choice between open source and proprietary software when they don't know
> what a compiler does, let alone how to use one.  I agree with Matthew that
> those concepts can be learned using proprietary software as well, as legions
> of programmers can attest.
>
> That being said - Matthew seems to assume that the employers of new college
> graduates are going to be using proprietary software as a matter of course,
> and that is simply not the case in industry.  gcc is the de facto standard
> in compilers and has been since the early 1990s.  That's why Borland is now
> a piddly enterprise middleware company, when in 1988 they were the compiler
> kings with 10k employees.  Anyone coming out of college with a deep
> understanding of gcc (and compiler theory in general, which they can get
> much more efficiently from gcc than any other compiler) will have no trouble
> finding a job.  Knowing the rest of the compilation suite - gnu as, ld,
> binutils, and particularly gdb and its extensions - means choosing from
> multiple jobs over $50k/yr.
>
> The primary reason to use open source at the undergraduate level is not
> because it is free but because it is GOOD and there is a lot of free
> documentation, tutorials, communities, etc. out there to help.   For
> programmers, locking down to one proprietary compiler would be a much worse
> choice than gcc simply because gcc is available on all platforms,
> particularly the large number of embedded platforms out there, and you can
> take the thing apart and examine it insides by looking at the source.  I
> learned far more in a few days combing the gcc sources *after* college, on
> my own time, than I did in two quarters of undergraduate compiler courses in
> college.  I wish like heck that I had had access to the source code for a
> world-class C compiler when I had to write a portion of one for a class.
>  Students should at least have the knowledge that such a thing exists.
>
> The same thing goes for non-technical education.  Writers should be using
> openoffice instead of word because openoffice is far less horrid than Word,
> and accounting students should be using the openoffice spreadsheet for the
> same reason.  I hesitate to advocate Gimp over Photoshop because the
> latter's UI is SO MUCH better, but the concept holds true if one wants to
> learn why something works, not just how to make it work.  Every feature and
> nuance they learn in open-source software translates directly to proprietary
> software. If anything, I would suggest that students work through their
> first 80% of university education using open-source and then obtain the
> low-cost proprietary equivalents on their way out in order to get the most
> recent versions so they can claim the skills on their resumes.  Programming
> students, of course, would have no need for this - they'll be using the GNU
> tools in their jobs anyway.
>
> In short, I can't agree that open-source is not a financially sound choice.
>  People get hired for skills and knowledge of concepts, not programs,
> proprietary or otherwise.
>
> Luis - I could suggest a different approach for your abstract, or at least
> for the talk:
>
> We have been collectively raising an entire generation of engineers
> who are ignorant of the wealth of educational opportunities that
> open-source software availability provides.  Deep learning about
> complex subjects can be accelerated dramatically with access to
> source code, which is not an option with proprietary software.
> Students should be aware of the opportunities with open source.
>
> And to answer your original question, here is the gateway to buying cheap
> proprietary software at my alma mater:
> http://its.ucsc.edu/service_catalog/software_licensing/
>
> Best of luck with the talk!  I'm looking forward to attending
>
> Jeff.
>
> On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Matthew Jadud <mjadud at allegheny.edu>wrote:
>
>> Hi Luis,
>>
>> Your abstract makes some claims that you cannot support. For example:
>>
>> [quote]
>> We have been collectively raising an entire generation of engineers
>> who are ignorant of the essential inner-workings of hardware and
>> software due to the widespread use of proprietary products in college
>> campuses which has prevented them from learning how things really
>> work.
>> [/quote]
>>
>> I suspect you will be "preaching to the choir" at OSCON, but you
>> cannot actually, rationally, defend that statement. It is overstated
>> and you have no evidence that the use of closed-source software
>> somehow creates engineers who are ignorant of the inner workings of
>> *anything*. Or, if you do, I would like to see the peer-reviewed
>> research that demonstrates it.
>>
>> Given your question, I'm going to make the assumption that you're
>> going to attack the (common) practice of students receiving
>> low-cost/gratis copies of proprietary software. My apologies if my
>> assumption is wrong. If you do, please include a rational, financial
>> argument from the student's perspective as to why this is a bad idea.
>> While I believe we need to encourage change, we cannot expect our
>> students to make choices that are not financially sound. From the MIT
>> webpages:
>>
>> [quote]
>> Nine months' tuition and fees for 2009–2010 is $37,782. Additionally,
>> undergraduate room and board is approximately $11,360, dependent on
>> the student's housing and dining arrangements. Books and personal
>> expenses are about $2,858.
>> [/quote]
>>
>> http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html
>>
>> If an engineer graduates from MIT and has zero proficiency with the
>> tools used by the employers, how is she going to pay back her student
>> loans? That's no small change... and walking out the door saying "I
>> don't use Autodesk as a matter of principle because it is closed
>> source" won't get you far in the interview circuit.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Matt
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>
>
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