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WhyIUseOpenSourceAndHow

Why I Don't use Blackboard and Microsoft Word, and How

If you want to see this in a slide presentation form, click on the [SHOW] box at the top right.

Overview

This page was created for a TGIF Presentation at Bryn Mawr College, Friday April 2, 2004.

I don't use proprietary software if I can help it. In this presentation, I'll discuss some of the reasons, and show some pointers as to how I accomplish this.

proprietary software - software that is leased (not sold) to the end user to be run according to a company's license. You have no other rights other than what they explicitly grant you, and they typically don't grant you much. Example: you often don't have the right to run the program at home AND at work. The program may expire at some point. You have much less rights than you do with, say, a book. When you buy a book, there aren't rules about where you can use it (work or home) nor rules against loaning it to someone else nor rules about what you can do with it (there aren't rules about tearing out the pages, although your parents probably mentioned that that is not a good thing to do).

free software - software that is provided under a license (often the GNU GPL) which allows users to build upon it and requires sharing if you want to distribute your extensions and improvements. This kind of software may cost money. Remember the phrase "'free' as in speech, not 'free' as in beer." Think: Mozilla, OpenOffice, Linux, ...

open source software - software that is provided under a license (maybe GNU GPL, but more likely BSD-like) which grants users some freedoms, but usually has some limitations as compared to free software. Think: Mac OS X, ...

I have divided the following arguments against proprietary software into 5 broad categories. I have provided these in an order from the most pragmatic to the most ethical, although it may be the ethical motivations that have the most social implications (and it is those that are the most important to me).

(!) Many categories in this list are in principle items; some are just current tendencies. For example, Microsoft could give away their operating system someday. So, the issue that proprietary software costs a lot of money is not an in principle difference. However, the fact that free software grants you many freedoms, while Microsoft's licenses do not is an in principle difference.

Security and Privacy

Currently, proprietary software has a tendency to be oblivious to security and privacy issues. For example, Microsoft Word documents may contain metadata about the author(s) and details of a document. You may be sending out information other than just the text of a document if you email a Word file. There are reports in the media that bits of other documents, or details about previous edited versions of a document may get sent with Microsoft's Word program.

The idea that you could receive an email attachment that could execute a program is the most dangerous idea I have ever heard of! Any time you receive a Microsoft Office file open yourself up to this possibility! This problem has three contributing parts:

  1. that certain proprietary email programs allow attachments to be executed

  2. that certain proprietary documents allow programs to be embedded in them

  3. that certain proprietary operating systems allow any user to change system items, or have access to private data

None of these programs (OS, email, documents) were designed with any thought toward security or privacy. None of the free software programs (OS, email, or documents) that I use allow the above. I have NEVER had a virus on my computer.

Economic

Proprietary software tends to be very expensive. I haven't spent a single penny on software for my desktop since 1997. Seven years, zero dollars. None. I use very nice word processing programs, spreadsheets, computer languages, graphics programs, etc.

I also haven't spent any money for any of my classes on special software. No Mathematica. No Microsoft Visual C++. No Internet Explorer. Not even money for a word processor. (We have spent department money on RedHat Enterprise software for our server, but I haven't needed anything else.)

When you are dependent on any software, you are at the mercy of the owner of that software. If you need Microsoft to open your Word documents, then they can charge you whatever they want. With free software, you have control over your software. You have freedom to upgrade or not. You control your destiny.

Educational Freedom

Proprietary software often has the tendency to have opposite goals from that of software for education. Proprietary software:

  1. would like to trap you into using it forever

  2. would like you to update every year

  3. keeps getting more complex and bloated with features (aka, reasons for upgrading)

  4. is expensive for teachers, administrators, and students

Blackboard (and other web-based course management systems) puts up a barrier that prevents the community of scholars from exploring what is being taught at other places. When the Internet first became popular, the ability of sharing course materials was just beginning to be possible. However, Blackboard all but eliminates the community.

(Don't believe me? Try examining any course at Bryn Mawr via our [WWW]Blackboard site. Can't get there. Or try searching for someone's course materials. You won't find it behind Blackboard's barricade.)

Blackboard also makes it difficult to get course organization out of their system (schedules, assignments, overall course design). Why would they make it easy? That would be against their goals of trapping you in their system.

Alternative course management systems make it easy to move between systems, because their goal is to make our lives easy, not to trap us.

Pedagogical Freedom

If we wanted to add a pedagogical methodological tool to Blackboard, we can't for multiple reasons. First, we might not have access to the source code. Secondly, even if we have access to the source code, if we add a function or option, it may become useless in the next upgrade. Because we don't control when and what we upgrade, we are at the whim of these companies.

Science requires that results be reproducible. Without the source code, no experiment (let alone an election) could be completely verified.

Ethical, Part 1

Any venture that makes it illegal for me to share in a community of like-minded people should be carefully examined. Proprietary software makes it illegal for me to share it. Sharing is a core idea of a humanitarian society.

Software should be able to be shared, and developed in groups. True innovation comes from having the freedom to play, change, and build upon other's work.

Software is more like a city's infrastructure than a book. We would never tell faculty, staff, or students that they should drive General Motors cars, but we seem to feel it is ok to tell them what Word processor or operating system they should use.

Educational software should not work better for some students or schools simply because the use other Microsoft software. Leverage has no place in education.

Ethical, Part 2

Microsoft has used its monopoly leverage time after time. Here are some examples:

  1. None of Microsoft's file formats are open (published standards). This allows them to change them with each "upgrade", which makes it hard for people to use other software that attempts to mimic Microsoft's formats.

  2. Embrace and extend. Microsoft begins by supporting a standard (say, HTML) then changes it so that it will only work with their software (operating system, webbrowser, etc). They are now using patents of their file formats to block future competitors.

  3. Try using their MSN search tool. You won't find any details on competitors, like Linux. They use the idea of an "search index" to block people from finding out information about their competitors.

  4. GIF files created in Microsoft's Visio won't render properly in non-Microsoft's browser. That's just plain mean.

Here is a chain of events:

  1. Microsoft invests $10 million in Blackboard.

  2. Blackboard buys Prometheus open source course management system.

  3. Blackboard kills Prometheus.

  4. Blackboard states [WWW]"It will be more feature-rich to run Blackboard out of the box on Microsoft...End users will notice a difference between systems run on Microsoft and those run on other platforms"

Students will have a better experience if they use one browser (Microsoft's) over another? Would one be appalled if a textbook company said that students that buy their eye glasses with their textbook will have a better viewing experience? Both are disgusting uses of leverage. Leverage has no place in education.

All of these instances are called leveraging and is illegal in many cases in the US when used to compete unfairly.

Do you want to support a company that has these kinds of ethics?

Yeah, but...

You're right; it's not as good, it's better in many cases! No viruses. Low cost. And Freedom, sweet, sweet freedom. What is your freedom worth?

Not true. Many open source programs are as easy to use as anything that Microsoft has ever produced.

Yes! Let's do that. Let's take all of the money that we would save, and hire a team of people that would make the software do exactly what we want, and then give that software back to the community. We would contribute to a group of like-minded people to make software fun and useful.

All of those have free replacements. But, we each have our priorities. You decide. But consider what you are sacrificing before you decide.

We might put some others to work.

Projects

  1. [WWW]GNU GPL - General Public License, copyleft, "free as in speech"

  2. [WWW]Open Knowledge Initiative - free course management

  3. [WWW]Mozilla - browser, composer, email, etc.

  4. [WWW]OpenOffice.org - office software, wordprocessing, spreadsheets, presentation, etc.

  5. [WWW]Edventure.brynmawr.edu- a small, useful local course management system

  6. [WWW]Wikipedia.org- who decides what words mean? we do!

  7. [WWW]Wikishow - this slide software was built on others' work