Thanks to Richard Stallman for his response (quoted in its entirety below) to this entry and his graciousness in sharing it. Some follow-up questions I have are shared beneath his response.

Your question about how schools can migrate to free software is not a fair one; without details, it isn't a well-posed problem.  If a school wants to migrate, I will look for people with experience in migrating schools who would like to help.

What I can say, at the same general level as your question, is that around the world there are schools which have migrated.  It is not a trivial job, but it is not terribly hard if you allow a year or two to do it.  The main necessary ingredient is will power--the sort of firm decision that comes from ethical convictions.

If you would like to encourage this will to freedom, the way to do it is to raise the issue in ethical and social terms.  I suggest you reference http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html, which presents arguments why it is important for schools to migrate.

You said you'd be grateful if a school "uses technology", as if that were a step forward regardless of what technology it is.  I disagree. Using proprietary software in a school teaches the students bad habits.  It's better to teach them no software, so as to not teach anything wrong.

That also avoids adding to the inertia of the load we need to shift. The less proprietary software is implanted in the school, the easier the job of migration will be.  So if you can't convince a school to migrate to free software this year, try to convince the school not to buy any computers this year.  At least they won't be making more work for themselves come migration time.

Why won't I use Skype to have a conversation to convey these ideas? Because the action of using Skype would contradict my words.  If I say to the public, "Join this conversation with me, and first you need to install Skype," that would make the things I would say to them about non-free software hypocritical.  In this case, the medium is part of the message in a way McLuhan did not envision. So I use other methods to communicate with people, ways that don't require them or me to install any non-free software.  That way, my actions reinforce my words.  If you want to have a conversation with me, you'll have to try out one of those methods.  Who knows, you might get used to it, and that would take you one step closer to deleting Skype from your computer.

If you cite this in your blog, please keep the paragraphs separate.

Ill-structured problems are real, and few problems are neat...most are messy. So, how might a well-posed problem read? I'll have to spend some time on that. Reminds of problem-based learning! What a neat lead-in for an article on open source and free software...thanks for the tip!

Isn't society pushing proprietary software on schools, and aren't "bad habits" defined by the culture in which we live? If American culture sees privatization of our schools as good, big business in schools, why isn't that alright? It's only wrong if you are adhering to another standard, an objective standard. And, from what moral authority do you derive this objective standard that labels using proprietary software in schools as bad? Some would say that there are many benefits to using proprietary tools in schools.

As to Skype, what are other methods that allow for the same level of quality as Skype but without the Stallman stigma (you know, the more I read, the more legendary you become!)? Don't plain telephones use proprietary codecs of some sort? It's not like the phone lines are "free," are they? Aren't these compromises you have made to live in a society as proprietary as it comes?

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning