Getting started

Dipping a toe in the pond

Welcome to the world of Open Source Software. The surprising thing is that it doesn't look very different to any other sort of software. If you had two good quality applications running side by side on the screen, and one was Open Source, there's a good chance you wouldn't be able to spot which was which.

But, there's a big difference you can't see on the screen: Open Source Software normally doesn't cost anything. Install it on as many computers as you like, totally legally, without paying a penny. That makes trialling the software easy. No worries about licensing, expiring trial periods, adverts or spyware. Just download the software, install it on a PC alongside your current applications and give it a go. Most Open Source applications run on a range of operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, for example).

Don’t forget that there is also lots of software available to run on webservers – website content management systems, virtual learning environments, timetabling and resource allocation/room booking systems, even fault loggers for your IT helpdesk! A large proportion of the software that supports the phenomenon of Web2.0 is OSS., From a user’s perspective, these web applications work in any browser so you can try them without altering your desktop PCs at all.

Of course, just like any other application, an Open Source application won't be quite the same as its alternatives. That's true whenever you change applications (and sometimes when you upgrade from one version to a newer version, such as the upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007 from earlier versions).

The best approach is to go in with the right expectations. You'll probably be able to figure out the basics of a new application without any problems and, like all software, getting the most out of it and exploring the more esoteric features is likely to need some additional personal effort or external training (whether that's from a book, a formal course, an Internet guide, help from others on this site or in the wider open source community, or something else). Software that performs a more complex task, such as 3D modelling, video editing or generating mathematical formulas, is likely to be harder to learn, but how-to guides are often available.

Background to OSS

First of all, it really isn’t necessary to understand this in order to make good use of OSS. However, the background to the emergence of OSS is an interesting social phenomenon, has the potential to transform the software development industry, and perhaps most importantly, is illustrative of the way the internet is changing almost all aspects of human communication and collaboration.

The first developments of OSS and the wider “free software movement” were undertaken by lone technologists who generally either didn’t want to pay for expensive software, or believed that such software should be open and available for all to inspect and modify (from an ethical perspective). This argument remains persuasive today – wouldn’t citizens want to be totally free to inspect the software picking winning numbers in a lottery, or counting votes in an election.

This is of course at odds with traditional commercial approaches to “intellectual property” such as software, but also music and literature where ideas and knowledge are protected via patents and copyright to allow their owners to make money out of them. As has been seen elsewhere (eg in music and film downloading), the internet is highly disruptive to existing business approaches, and the legal framework is struggling to keep up, with different laws in different countries (for example, software ideas are patentable in the USA but not in the UK).

Broadly, the OSS advocates believe that the philosophy and ethics of freeing software and digital information for creative use has benefits to society that could outweigh the more obvious advantages from traditional protection and licensing.  The jury is of course, still out! However, the take-up of OSS by many large IT companies as suppliers, and by corporate IT users in the private and public sector means the OSS approach is gaining in credibility, largely leveraged by the internet.

In its early days, the web was a broadcast medium - organisations and individuals used fairly complex tools to publish websites which largely sen out their message – most internet use was “downloading content from sites” – this is why domestic broadband today still downloads much faster than it uploads.

However the web is changing - tools like Wikipedia, Youtube, Myspace and Facebook place the emphasis on creativity and collaboration among users.   These new websites provide powerful functionality for everyone to use (it’s really easy to build a website on Myspace or Facebook – much easier than using traditional web publishing software). Google actually provide a full set of Office tools (wordprocessor, spreadsheet, etc) online, with the emphasis on collaborating on a document. These phenomena – social networking, blogging, wikis, etc. are collectively referred to as “Web2.0”.

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform [software to do things not just present static information], and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.

Tim O’Reilly

Web2.0 is really shaking up the whole world of communications, media and business services. It’s therefore hardly surprising that in the niche of software development, there are some major initiatives which have been using it for a long time. OSS is one such initiative, and seen in this context, it’s possible to imagine a near future where OSS is the major part of the software we use everyday.

Becta negotiations with Microsoft

Microsoft licensing can be complex, and schools have two main options if they wish to license Microsoft products. They can acquire perpetual licences, giving the school the right to use the software permanently. Microsoft SELECT is the most common type of proprietary licence that most schools are familiar with and it is usually the most cost effective way for educational institutions who want to use Microsoft software to acquire the necessary perpetual licenses.

Microsoft also offers schools a subscription licensing option (the School Agreement Subscription) which gives them the right to “rent” Microsoft software for a fixed period of time (eg for 1 year or 3 years). At the end of the rental period, if the school still wishes to use the rented Microsoft software it has the ability to extend the rental period or convert to a perpetual licence via a buyout payment. The buyout payment can be substantial.

While subscription licensing usually has the lowest cost of entry of the various Microsoft licensing options, it is an “all or nothing” approach which can have the effect of requiring schools to pay Microsoft licences fees for computers that aren’t actually running any of Microsoft’s software. This is because the subscription licensing cost is based on the total number of computers in the school. This has meant that if a school is using Microsoft’s subscription licensing, fees need to be paid to Microsoft for Apple Mac or Linux computers, and indeed those computers running OpenOffice.org.

Becta believed that such licensing arrangements harmed the uptake of Open Source products such as OpenOffice.org and Becta also considered that Microsoft’s approach to interoperability in Office 2007 made it difficult to transfer documents easily and effectively between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2007. Again this could potentially harm the uptake of OpenOffice.org.

Following extensive negotiations with Microsoft which failed to resolve these concerns, Becta made a complaint to the OFT regarding both issues:

1) the lack of interoperability in Microsoft Office 2007 making it difficult to use it in schools alongside alternative products;

2) the limitations that Microsoft places on schools using its subscription licensing arrangements.

Recent progress on effective ODF support in Microsoft Office 2007 is potentially great news for the growth of OSS use in schools. The ODF format is the document format used by OpenOffice.org and by an increasing number of Microsoft’s competitors.

“Microsoft announced recently its intention to provide built-in support in Office 2007 for the Open Document Format (ODF) file format.”

We think this is really important as OpenOffice.org is a great OSS alternative to Microsoft Office, but realistically, when creating documents for other people to read (or when moving your files from one machine you use to another), the hassle of changing file formats and the risk of losing formatting has been off-putting.

The inclusion of built-in ODF support within Office 2007 will make it much easier for users to transfer documents (and retain their rich content features) from Office 2007 to OpenOffice.org and vice versa.

As an example of the benefits, ODF support within MS Office allows students to use OpenOffice.org at home, removing the significant cost of a student MS Office licence (£40+) and enabling lower specification devices to be used without loss of interoperability with school systems. This should help reduce the cost of home provision for students.

Likewise the announcement on a new approach to subscription licensing in schools should help with the uptake of OSS.

“Microsoft will introduce a new licensing programme for schools, initially as a pilot available to all schools, in approximately six months alongside the current School Agreement arrangements.

“The UK will pilot a new Microsoft licensing scheme that removes the requirement for schools using subscription agreements to pay Microsoft to license systems that are using their competitors' technologies. So for the first time schools using Microsoft's subscription licensing agreements can decide for themselves how much of their ICT estate to licence.”

This new flexibility means for example that schools might decide to create a computer lab or a student resource area and use Open Source software (for example Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org and Firefox) and decide to exclude all those systems from their Microsoft licence count. Previously if the school used a Microsoft Subscription Agreement they would have had no such flexibility and would have been required to pay Microsoft licence fees for their OSS systems!

Additionally, even when many of the school’s computers could not run Microsoft Vista schools would still have been required to include those systems in their Microsoft licence count and pay the appropriate licence fees. Under the new arrangements schools can exclude such systems and put the money saved to other uses.

The change to these arrangements opens up the market for schools using Microsoft’s subscription licensing to try out alternative software (including OSS) without paying a direct price penalty. The changes in Office 2007 mean that all educational institutions should no longer face unnecessary interoperability hurdles when using products such as OpenOffice.org.

The pilot arrangements proposed by Microsoft mean that licensing costs per computer will be somewhat higher if not all computers are licensed, so schools will need to calculate carefully whether to switch from the “all or nothing” to the “flexible subscription” licence arrangements. However, the more schools target their subscription licensing agreement to what they actually need, the greater the potential for savings – and that should be good news for schools and for those who want to encourage the use of alternative approaches based on OSS.

On a related note, many readers will be aware that Becta had advised against upgrading to Vista and Office 2007. (The lack of ODF support in Office 2007 was only one reason for the Office 2007 advice). The advice remains unchanged until the ODF support is actually rolled out (we think this is due in the first half of 2009), at which time Becta will update its advice.

References

Becta Press release

http://news.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=34425

Becta FAQ

http://schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=re&&catcode=ss_res_pro_bps_sof_04&rid=15696

Benefits to Schools

Many schools are beginning to make good use of OSS. We’ve found that their most common reasons are:

• Saving money! Free is free, after all!   Some proprietary software can be expensive (particularly the specialist programs, like graphics and media). OSS may, for example, allow you to equip every machine in the media suite rather than just one or two.
• Re-using older equipment. (saving money again, really). The newer versions of Windows and applications such as Microsoft Office need powerful machines to run well. Older machines can be repurposed in a general workspace (the library, an internet café) and run basic software like a web browser and wordprocessor using OSS.
• Provide services that would otherwise be too expensive. Some proprietary software products can be very expensive. OSS is allowing some schools to explore “whole enterprise software” such as resource booking and timetabling services, helpdesk systems for ICT support.
• Providing alternatives to learners. Many ICT subject curricula require learners to understand both the varieties of software rather than just using a single suite. OSS also provides a way to understand the OSS community, one of the most influential developments in the world of ICT.

Choosing to use OSS shouldn’t be a simple “it’s free – let’s go for it!”. Issues such as user training and support and technical service maintenance (training for technical staff) need to be considered. And the fact that many proprietary products are available at special education rates for schools is also a factor.

There are also benefits other than straightforward cost – to the curriculum and administrative functions. OSS isn’t a simple choice, but it’s one that’s definitely worth considering   

Current use in schools

This article reflects the experiences and findings of the project team in the early part of the project. We make no claim that it is a representative sample. We hope you will add to the range and substance, through comments, postings in the Forum and perhaps by submitting a Case study, and the article will be updated in due course to incorporate extra material.

OSS desktops

We visited a primary school that uses a mix of Windows and Linux (Edubuntu) thin clients. They had decided to go for this approach to maximise the number of PCs in the school, the move being initiated by the school head. The school reported that the Linux machines are very popular with Reception children and teachers because the majority of use there is with web content (EducationCity, Espresso) or general PC familiarity. Interestingly, the small physical size of the thin clients, coupled with some mini-keyboards and mice, means the school can get more PCs into a space in the Reception classroom. For older primary children, the suite of applications that comes with Edubuntu seems to serve pretty well alongside the Microsoft machines. The children are able to switch between the two platforms without any problems at all, and with almost no learning curve.

We also found several examples of Linux PCs being used in “internet café” and general use situations where the requirement for a basic PC with a browser and word processor meant that older machines (too slow and with too little memory to run new versions of Windows) could be reused successfully.

OSS Applications

We’ve spoken to a number of schools who use OSS applications as part of their Windows desktop provision. It seems GIMP and Audacity are very popular, probably because (a) these are great applications and (b) their proprietary counterparts are pretty expensive. We also hear about OpenOffice being used as an alternative to MS Office. An added bonus is that it apparently reads corrupted MS Office documents quite well even where MS Office says they are unrecoverable.

Where the web, and particular Web2.0 applications (blogging, wikis, podcasting), are involved, open source applications predominate.

Open Source and Inclusion

We’ve heard quite a few reports that inexpensive mini laptops (such as the ASUS eeePC) are being given to children as personal devices which they can take home. Unit cost for the software as well as the hardware is a big issue here, and it is clear that the lower specification machines run Linux (eg http://www.puppylinux.org/">Puppy Linux) and the packaged OSS applications more happily than Windows, as well as this being cheaper. The people we spoke to suggested that providing an internet browser and an office suite covers over 90% of computing needs for the children (including primary children). Where more specialist applications were required and could not be downloaded, these were supported at the school.

We intend to cover more on this approach to using OSS, and ask anyone who has interesting experiences to pass them on through contributions in the Forum.

Moodle

The use of the Moodle VLE has been quietly growing in schools. In 2006, OSS-watch identified that 56% of FE colleges were using Moodle. The number is certainly higher now, and Moodle is also used extensively in HE. Initially regarded as perhaps too “technical” for schools, we have found many schools are now adopting it successfully, and finding ways to make Moodle work for them, where previous (expensive) VLEs have often fallen by the wayside and been unused. It is hard to tell whether this is due to Moodle’s functionality and customisability or is representative of a maturing use of ICT. We do think that being able to start working with it ‘for free’ reduces the pressure on getting the approach right first time for the entire school, and perhaps better supports organic growth. From an OSS perspective, it appears that Moodle has succeeded in creating a sustainable community of developers and users, working across all the main education sectors (something no proprietary suppliers have achieved to date). Where VLEs are used well, they quickly become a business-critical resource – it cannot be the case that Moodle’s success is down entirely to the fact it is free.

With your help, we plan to look more closely at how schools are using Moodle, and to bring into the discussion relevant experiences from other educational sectors.

File and webservers

A number of the schools we spoke to use OSS servers for filing and webservices. Quite often, these appear to be managed alongside Windows Servers, on a mix and match basis, without any real problems.

OSS as part of an emerging ICT strategy

This story reflects the experience of a governor of a large secondary school with around 1600 students aged 11-18, and about 1000 PCs. It uses OSS applications to manage its network, and has a successful and growing Moodle service. The desktop PCs use MS Windows and Office as the core tools. The staff are well aware of the potential for OSS, and the strategy is discussed with both the ICT lead technician and the SMT members responsible for ICT.

Five years ago the ICT in the school was flakey – the network and core services (e-mail, web, administration and enterprise applications) were based on high quality software, but the uptime and level of service were poor. Teachers’ confidence in the network and their own ICT skills was fragile, and the focus was skewed too much to bringing in this shiny new thing - shiny and new in both educational and technical senses. The school business manager (new to the school) described it: “we have a dodgy Ferrari of an ICT system – sometimes brilliant but often broken”. He set about replacing it with “a Mondeo estate” – nothing fancy but always starts in the morning.

This has been achieved. Unsurprisingly, teacher confidence has blossomed and the school is now making good use of ICT both for administration and across the curriculum. Teachers now trust that the service will work, and so the inevitable support outages and upgrades are all conducted in a less febrile atmosphere. In the rather uncharacteristic words of the ICT technician, “the delicate flower of user acceptance has bloomed”.

The annual cost of core software licences for the school is less than the cost of a teacher (illustrating the heavy discounts over commercial rates that education enjoys). The recent upgrade to Office 2007 was painful – the “delicate flower” was at risk for a while. The appetite therefore, for a wholesale change to an OSS desktop and office suite does not exist. However, the need to offer a varied ICT curriculum (and hence offer a range of different applications), the desire to reuse rather than discard older PCs, and the targeted use of OSS in some curriculum areas (where it is conspicuously better value than the proprietary alternatives) means the school is continuing to experiment in areas where the risk is controllable.

The school is confident that this is a sensible approach at this time. Building work has started on the BSF programme, and from 2010 the school will be moving wholesale to a managed service of thin clients, OpenOffice and centralised VLE services. Other schools in the district open in September this year. It will be interesting to see how the change management is handled  

General impressions

There is definitely a lack of clarity in many of the schools we spoke to about how and where OSS could become a part of their ICT strategy. There are also residual concerns about the stability and supportability of OSS, as well as the quality of the user experience.

As the project develops, we would like to hear from schools that are making successful use of OSS (or, indeed, if you’ve tried and failed, or even thought about it and rejected going down that road). We have a friendly team who are looking for good examples to cover – we’ll do the work of writing up the studies, so if you’ve got a story to tell, please do get in touch - moderator [at] opensourceschools [dot] org [dot] uk.

Alternatively, please post any comments you have on this page using the comment option below or go to the Forum and post your contributions there (you will need to be registered and logged in to the site).

Four Freedoms

Originally published on BBC Open Lab, and written in a personal capacity.

Awareness of open source software amongst teachers, technical staff and students is certainly far greater now than even a few years ago, thanks to projects like Moodle, Firefox and Audacity leading their respective fields. For schools, the appeal of open source is that it's free. But 'free' is about freedom at least as much as it's about price: Liberté rather than gratuite as the French would have it. The free software movement have identified the four freedoms underpinning open source software, and these offer compelling reasons for educators to look seriously at this software.

0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose From the perspective of most schools, the big advantage of open source software is that no-one is demanding payment for licence fees, either outright or as annual subscription. That's not to say that it's without any costs, but training, support, maintenance and, for web-based applications, hosting, are costs which apply to all software, whether open source or proprietary. Back in 2005, a small scale study by Becta identified significant savings in the total cost of ownership for open source schools, not only for licences but also for hardware, training and support.

1: The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs Whist there are going to be relatively few teachers or students who will have the technical expertise or the inclination to read through the source code, the fact that the opportunity's there might well be important for a few sixth form computing students, and perhaps the members of a programming club lower down the school. Being able to get to the source code potentially gives students a far better understanding of how software works and of how it gets written: something which my own Year 6 pupils got quite excited about. More importantly, access to the source code allows school techies to tailor the software to the specific needs of the school; it's this adaptability of open source software which is its unique, er, selling point. For me, this is at the core of why open source software matters for schools.

2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour This is a real benefit for schools. Being able to give students CD-ROMs or memory sticks with copies of all the software used in schools is tremendously liberating - no longer does a teacher need to worry about home computers not having particular programs, having the wrong version, or having pirated copies. Whilst not a complete solution, this also goes a long way to addressing the digital divide. The link between children's informal use of technology at home and formal use inside the school curriculum also becomes a closer, stronger one.

3. The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Open source software is often developed though a community working together on a project, and it's great when schools that are using open source start participating in that community. A lot of open source programs now have a modular structure, so it's relatively easy for programmers to slot in additional functionality. Sharing these with the other users of a program provides just one way of working in partnership with a worldwide community; other ways of contributing to a project include helping with documentation, spotting or fixing bugs, helping with interface design or suggesting features.

As well as the many open source projects which school staff and students can get involved with, there's now a Becta supported community of people interested in sharing experiences of or finding out about open source software at opensourceschools.org.uk. At the moment, we're focussing on supporting users of existing open source programs, but we're keen that, as our community grows, we'll also be able to put teachers, students and developers in touch with one another, so they can work together on educationally focussed projects. Do come along and join in.

OSS in your IT Strategy

This article is reproduced, with permission, from the website of OSS-Watch, a project providing information and guidance on open source software for FE and HE. Its messages are equally applicable to schools.

Universities and colleges are increasingly trying to standardise and streamline their IT services in order to save money and provide a more reliable service. Sometimes, this is translated into concentrating on one or two software suppliers. This document explains why this may not be the best strategy, and suggests that open source solutions should be considered.

1. Choice and the exit strategy

A range of choices is almost always regarded as a way of achieving better results.

The main reason why we do not wish to concentrate all our spending and expertise on the software solutions of one or two software suppliers is that we are in danger of being locked in. This problem may manifest itself financially in:

• licence price increases which we are powerless to avoid; typically, suppliers will offer us a good choice for the first year, and increase prices in subsequent years.

• changes in licensing: an initial regime may provide free licences for staff at home, but a subsequent deal may charge for that service.

• non-perpetual licences, whereby we are obliged to repurchase the software each year.

We always need to consider an exit strategy for any decision involving licensing.

More importantly, perhaps, we run the risk of having data stored in proprietary systems (databases, version control systems, word-processing applications) which we are unable to access when we lose the right to use the software.

The use of open source products, which all have perpetual and transferable licences, avoids the problems outlined above.

2. Standardise on data standards not software

It will be stated by many vendors that there is no lock in of data when using their software, because they follow standards. Where this is true it becomes unnecessary to standardise on one software supplier, because applications adopting the same standard become almost interchangeable. This, in theory, allows us to choose the best product for the job in hand, regardless of the supplier.

If a software vendor's product is not compatible with other software, this should be regarded as a serious problem. IT applications should be regarded as independent of the software package which implements the specification, wherever possible.

Many software companies use open standards, by which we mean ISO standards or recommendations from independent bodies like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) or the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). However, others promote ‘industry standards’ which are typically controlled by a single vendor. Some open source applications also use custom data formats, but there is little incentive for them not to use the open standards, and so most do. Even where a custom format is used users of the software have full access to the format specification and the code used to manipulate that format. Therefore it is much easier to migrate away from such software.

Whenever possible, it is best to provide users with a choice of products, and this can be achieved if the products adopt open standards.

3. Development strategy

Very few IT systems work out of the box when delivered and require no changes over the years of their use. It is almost certain that you will have to invest a great deal of staff time in tailoring and supporting any widely used application within your organisation. If this investment is made in a proprietary software system, the problem of lock in reappears. If you are dependent on a support contract, outsourcing to a single vendor, this will inevitably slow the pace of innovation at your institution and prevent speedy technical development in response to change. All institutions, even small ones, must retain control of the systems they depend on.

The major advantage of your IT staff working in an open source environment is that they can make changes in a public forum, where other developers may check their work, improve it, and increase the effectiveness of your local team. By working to open standards, they can acquire portable skills which can be used in any future project.

Some smaller institutions will not have any development staff at all, but this does not rule out the use of open source software. There are companies to which you can outsource the support; this is, in fact, the business model of a number of key open source applications. Using both external consultants and in-house employees is probably best if your strategy is not to depend entirely on in-house support.

4. Providing for all

Most commercial software comes with limitations on licences, which means that decisions always have to be made on who is allowed to use it. Typically, this means that students may not have copies at home of programs which they use in college laboratories. Using open source software, with unlimited and perpetual redistribution rights, allows students and staff to use the same software anywhere at any time. Distance learning students (perhaps in other countries) are not disadvantaged by the choice of possibly expensive software, and there are no administrative overheads of recording licensed use. It should be noted that auditing of licences by some vendors has become more common in recent years and this trend is likely to continue.

It is unlikely that a single set of software choices will make everyone (staff and students) happy, either technically or at the simple user-preference level. It is highly desirable to allow them to choose their working preferences. Interoperability and support issues can be minimized by relying on open standards, and by using the web to deliver services.

Note: This document is derived from the document www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/itstrat.xml published by www.oss-watch.ac.uk. The latest quality assured OSS-Watch version is always available on the OSS-Watch site. Unless otherwise indicated, this page is © 2008 University of Oxford. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales licence.

Open Source Accessibility - making programs and content available to everyone

By Steve Lee

Accessibility means ensuring software and content is available to people with disabilities such as restricted movement,  blindness or learning difficulties and also for those with age related deteriorations like low vision or arthritis. Accessibility also means good universal design so that access is not solely dependent on just screen and mouse for control and keyboard for text input; something that can benefit a wide audience and in circumstances other than at a desktop PC (e.g mobile, loud noise, poor visibility).

Accessibility is an important part of the open source world which offers the possibility of low cost alternatives to pricey proprietary equipment and a chance for users to get involved in contributing to the tools they use. The following is a whistle stop tour of the field and some of the projects and communities involved in open accessibility.

The Linux desktops and GNOME in particular include features that allow a user to customise their experience to better suit their individual needs. Common options include those to use the numeric key pad to control the pointer, mouse options such as reversing the buttons and automatic click on dwelling over an item, high contrast colour schemes and large font sizes.

Interface conventions also exist that improve the accessibility of programs when followed by developers. Simple attention to details such such as ensuring full keyboard access to a program or web site make it usable by more people but often get overlooked.

More complex features come under the banner of "assistive technology" which are specific programs created to convert between a program's graphical user interface and other ways of access. Amongst these are On Screen Keyboards like GOK and SAW which allow text entry with only pointer access or a couple of simple switches connected to the computer. Screen readers such as NVDA and Orca allow access with only a keyboard and speak the screen content using synthetic speech. Head and eye tracking using a web cam (MouseTrap) is being develop and highly innovative programs exist such as Dasher which allows text entry using only a couple of distinct input gestures through various input devices. Other useful technologies include magnification and speech input.

Technically the assisitive technologies need special access to program user interfaces so they can monitor the state and control it accordingly. This is the realm of the so called Accessibility APIs and GNOME has a well developed a solution which also happens to be very useful for automatically testing programs using a form of "remote control".

The so called "web 2.0" proliferation of rich internet applications, such as Moodle or Gmail, which behave like desktop applications, mean that web developer's and web browsers need to provide similar support to that available on desktops. Fortunately the W3C are adding new standards to their existing accessibility work that allows this to happen (i.e WAI ARIA). Open source projects like Firefox and screen readers such as NVDA are at the forefront of support for these breaking technologies.

Mozilla's Firefox browser has many accessibility features, extensions and themes that help make the web more accessible as described on the AccessFirefox.org community site. Amongst the interesting innovations is the webvisum extension which provides CAPTCHA solving and community tagging for visually impaired users. Various accessibility tools also enable web developers to ensure their sites and web applications are accessible.

While some open source accessibility programs are separate projects there are also a couple of larger communities actively working on the big picture. Most notable are the GNOME and Mozilla accessibility communities, both of which are actively participating with other projects and products to develop new accessibility solutions.

An interesting and easy way to sample open source accessibility programs is to download the AccessApps USB memory stick from RSC Scotland N & E which comes loaded with programs that can be run on a Windows PC without any installing (some of the best general open source programs are also included). This not only showcases the programs but allows user to evaluate the options as well as taking them from PC to PC.

You can find out more at the OATSoft community which includes many examples of open source and free accessibility programs and the Full Measure website provides some introductory articles and programs. Python Powered accessibility was written with developers in mind but provides a introduction to various disabilities and accessibility options. Finally Moodle, one of the most popular open source educational tools and communities, has its own accessibility forum which you can access as a 'guest'.

Open Source Licences

General introduction

In order to understand what the benefits of open source software are, it is useful to have an understanding of how it is licensed and the differences between open source and commercial software licences (commercial licences will also apply to software that is known as ‘freeware’ ie. software you can use for free, but are unable to copy, distribute or change the source code for).

Commercial licences

If you have installed software you will have agreed to accept the licence under which the software is made available. For commercial software this will often be referred to as the End User Licence Agreement (EULA) and may restrict the number of machines the software can be used on. The licence will usually advise you of the copyright associated with the software and the penalties to be incurred if it is copied or redistributed without permission.

Open source licences

Open source software may frequently be distributed under an EULA, but it will also be available under an open source licence, and the open source licence will usually mean that and EULA is not terribly restrictive.

Open source licences come in two major categories, “copyleft” licences and “permissive” licences. “Copyleft” licences usually require that if you incorporate a piece of software under a copyleft open source licence into your software, you have to release your software under the same licence. This property of some open source licences has been (wrongly) used to create fear of using open source software. If you are using open source software under a copyleft licence, (rather than developing with it), these conditions do not apply to you.

“Permissive” licences tend to have few or no requirements on people developing the software. Even if you incorporate open source software in your own programme, under a permissive licence you are seldom required to do anything other than possibly credit the original author.

A licence is considered to be “open source” if it has been approved by the Open Source Initiative, or OSI. The OSI is widely recognised within the industry as controlling use of the term, “open source”, although it should be noted that the term is not a trademark and can therefore be misappropriated. To see whether or not a software licence is approved as “open source” by the OSI, you should refer to the OSI's list: http://opensource.org/licenses

The most widely used open source licence is a copyleft licence, the GNU General Public Licence (GPL). Version 2 of the GPL has been especially widely used, including such projects as Linux. The licence is now developed by the Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org/ who last year released version 3 of the licence. Further information is available from the GNU website http://www.gnu.org/licences/gpl.html

The preamble to the GPL licence (v3) gives a useful indication of how it differs from commercial software licences:

"The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works.

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you these rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights."

Other popular licences include the BSD licence and the Apache Software Foundation licence, which are both permissive licences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licences#BSD-style_licences

What open source licences mean for general users

If you use open source software made available under open source licences you will usually be able to:

• Obtain the software and code at no charge
• Install the software on as many machines as you wish and redistribute it to others
• Modify the code to suit your needs

If you want to simply install and use an open source application, you will not need to know anything more about licences. For those who wish to develop existing open source code or to start an open source project from scratch, more information on licences can be found at:

http://opensource.org/docs/osd

Useful links

The Open Source Initiative information about open source licences

http://opensource.org/

Free Software Foundation information about free software licences:

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/education

Creative Commons Licence

Creative Commons

The Creative Commons Licence relates to content. Creative Commons is an organisation that is working to provide an alternative to the traditional copyright protection which has ‘all rights reserved’ by maintaining the copyright of the author whilst granting some rights for users to copy, distribute and remix the content. So while Creative Commons does not relate to software, it is based upon similar principles to open source and can also be beneficial for education.

You may have noticed that this site has the following graphic on it:

	This graphic is conveying information about how the content within the site is made available for use by others. It shows that content is:
	Using a Creative Commons License…
	…that allows people to copy, distribute and remix the content as long as they give credit to the creator…
	…content is available as ‘Share Alike’ – people can create remixes and derivative works based on the content as long as they in turn make the content they create available under the same Creative Commons License.
Other options that can be incorporated in a Creative Commons license include:
	Non – commercial – the content may not be used for commercial purposes (ie. sold) without the permission of the content creator
	No derivative works – people can only copy and redistribute verbatim copies of the content and not make any derivative works based on it without the content creator’s permission

 You can use a Creative Commons licence for content you create, and can also use content created by others under the Creative Commons licence system (subject to the terms of each licence). An important consideration for teachers is to understand who owns the copyright – whether it is the teacher or the school (or the students). It is necessary to clarify this with your school before you release any content.

Creative Commons licenses are used in education to share learning resources for example:

The Blog run by José Picardo to support Modern Language teaching http://www.asisehace.net/blog/

SEN teacher http://www.senteacher.org/Home/

The Open University has developed the Open Learn website on which its learning materials are available free and under a Creative Commons licence. These include a variety of resources for education professionals based on the education courses offered by Open University http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/home.php

If you are interested in finding out more about using Creative Commons approaches and licences for sharing learning resources, there is a dedicated part of Creative Commons - ccLearn which is a portal for creators and users of Open Educational Resources. This provides information on how educational users can create, share and use resources using CC licensing http://learn.creativecommons.org/

Useful links

Introduction to Creative Commons license PDF http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/62/Creativecommons-informational-flyer_eng.pdf

QIA information on Creative Commons http://excellence.qia.org.uk/page.aspx?o=ferl.aclearn.resource.id43075

Open Source Projects as Communities of Practice

It was a great pleasure to attend last Tuesday's Mirandamod to hear Etienne Wenger discussing communities of practice (CoP), with particular relation to education, both in schools and, particularly, in relation to teachers' continuing professional development. I'm sure that the CoP approach to CPD is both more fulfilling for the individual and more effective for the profession than the traditional training model of courses and powerpoints that we see so much of: my own professional development has owed far more to colleagues in the various staff rooms, communities and networks with which I've been associated, not least MirandaNet, SchoolForge and Naace, than the training courses I've occasionally been sent on; I doubt my experience is that unusual.

Mirandamods are a particular style of unconference, bringing something of the reflection of an academic seminar to the participatory, micropresentation format of a teachmeet, and thus I took my turn presenting, taking the above title as my theme.

The larger open source projects, such as moodle (which I used extensively for my examples), drupal, wordpress, firefox and ubuntu have a great deal in common with Wenger and Lave's notion, which Wenger admitted was certainly not a new one, of the Community of Practice:

• There is clearly a shared domain - the project, and I guess at its heart, the code itself.
• Whilst it's certainly possible to use the code without participating in the community, these big projects have very active communities, happy and eager to "engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information."
• Furthermore, there is, at least because all members of the community share the use of the same code, a shared practice: members: "develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice"

A few other features of these large open source projects strike me as significant from a CoP perspective:

There are built in steps which make it easy for an individual to move from layman, simply a user of the open source software, to active participant in the project, such as

• gaining experience installing the software on their computer or to a webserver,
• contributing to discussion forums
• contributing to documentation and advocacy
• spotting bugs and testing beta releases
• modifying code to customize the operation or fix a bug
• creating a module to extend functionality - it's no coincidence that the examples I cite above all have highly modular architecture
• submitting patches and modules for peer review and incorporation into /contrib or /core repositories.
• becoming part of the core developer team with commit access to the CVS tree.

This progression offers a very informal sort of apprenticeship, although it's interesting how many of these project communities allow members to display badges recognizing participation and particular roles (eg Moodle's developer, partner and 'particularly helpful moodler' badges, and Ubuntu's beans.) The early stages are very close to the notion of legitimate peripheral participation that Lave and Wenger discussed back in 1991. I wonder if we see in these big projects something which has at least some points more in common with the cathedral than the bazaar (qv Raymond 2000)?

Because open source software is free, a gift culture tends to be present (Raymond 1998). The rewards for contributing to open source projects aren't therefore always, or even mainly, financial, but are more about kudos, the respect of one's peers. Similarly, as the software's downloaded for free and is what it is because of the contribution of a community, users perhaps feel that bit more willing to 'put something back', embarking on the path to participation in the project's community of practice.

Whilst community involvement in software projects is something we're seeing in the world of proprietary code too, for example with sharepoint and frog in the learning platform market and, I guess, iphone apps, access to the source code makes it possible for apprentice open source coders to learn from the work of the master craftsmen in a way that's not possible through use of APIs and SDKs alone, although Etienne pointed out in his talk at the 'mod that the master-apprentice relationship is certainly not necessary for a community of practice. Sripting languages such as php make it much easier for even relatively novice coders to see what's going on behind the scenes and apply customisation and fixes, allbeit at the risk of making things difficult for themselves come the next release of the codebase.

Anyhow, back to the Mirandamod. One thing that I'm sure struck many of us were just how many of the online CoPs described by my fellow Mirandanet fellows were based on Moodle. Moodle might not be the best software for facilitating the development of a CoP, given the distinction its course structure makes between teachers and students, but it had certainly captured the imagination of many of those presenting, allowing some really interesting professional development to take place in a very diverse range of fields. That Moodle is free is part of this, I know, but it's also worth remembering that Moodle is grounded in a social constructivist paradigm and has evolved to include the tools that educators in many sectors and contexts have come to find most useful. It's a tribute to Moodle's flexibility as a platform that teachers are as happy using it with their pupils as they are for their own professional development.

Etienne Wenger himself was inspiring and Leon Cych's video captures his talk in high quality. He explored concepts that would be familiar to those who've read Wenger 1999, but one of my lasting impressions was of how central the social dimension of humanity was to his understanding of learning: that as we're essentially social beings so our learning is essentially a social process; something I think Moodle captures well. Ettienne also touched on the embedding of organizational knowledge within the social fabric of the organization - something which had struck me too in my work exploring the links between VLEs and knowledge management. He made some interesting points about the importance of self-government in order to establish trust within a community - these are themes explored in Jono Bacon's eminently practical book on the Art of Community (2009) for O'Reilly, and something which Ubuntu has strived to do well, despite (because of?) Mark Shuttleworth's position as Self Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life . There was also an emphasis on the role of identity, I think as something socially constructed, with knowledge as integral to identity; Etienne said it wasn't about asking what your students can do, but about where they have visited.

I think there's some really interesting territory to explore here, and I'm confident that community of practice theory gives a very good framework for exploring the nature of the communities that grow up around open source projects, and perhaps provides a few pointers for how to make these communities, and thus the projects around which they gather more effective.

The above was originally published at milesberry.net/2009/09/open-source-projects-as-communities-of-practice/

Open Source and Web 2.0

“The bottom up organization, where distributed, self-motivated individuals creatively collaborate and work together on shared problems, has relevance both in terms of the creation of digital technologies we use for education and as an approach that could be adopted as part of the teaching and learning process” (Bacon & Dillon 2006)

Open source software has its origins back in academic computer science in the 1960s, where writing code was more about intellectual creativity and contributing something to the common good than about commercial gain, and where the respect of ones peers was often reward enough. I hope that the parallels with web 2.0 already start to become apparent, as these are amongst the reasons why folks are only too happy to spend time blogging, adding to wikipedia or posting photos up onto flickr.

Although much of the Internet is underpinned by open source code such as Apache, BIND and SendMail, and the Linux operating system has a high reputation for reliability and efficiency, open source has until quite recently been at the educational margins, with its principal appeal being free licensing, and thus savings in total cost of ownership (Becta 2005).

Whilst most of Web 2.0 is free too, in the sense of ‘free beer’, the ‘free’ aspect of open source code is more about free speech and other freedoms and just as much as not having to pay licence fees. The Free Software Foundation describe the four freedoms that using open source software brings:

• The freedom to use the software how you want;
• The freedom to change the software to suit your needs – this is the essential idea behind ‘open source’ – that the users have access to the program’s source code too, and can thus change any aspect of the program;
• The freedom to distribute the software and thus help your neighbours; and
• The freedom to distribute altered versions of the software and thus actively contribute to the development of the software through a distributed community.

Such freedoms have much in common with the sense of liberation felt by many as they experience Web 2.0: that suddenly the web isn’t about content and commerce, it becomes a place in which they’re free to share their ideas and creations, that their writing, recordings, images, etc become something valued by others, which enrich the common good, and which others can take, adapt, re-use and improve. Nowhere is this clearer than in Wikipedia, where the model of commons based peer production (Philips 2005) that is central to the development of open source code has been applied to writing an encyclopaedia. Comparing the way Wikipedia is written to the way a large open source application gets coded is a great illustration of the way Web 2.0 has made an experience similar to that of participation in open source development available to pretty much anyone.

• For a start, Wikipedia is free in both senses – there’s no charge for accessing it, and under its Creative Commons licence, anyone can adapt and redistribute what’s there.
• The motivation for writing or editing Wikipedia comes through factors such as recognition and a wish to contribute to the public good rather than financial reward, as with open source coding.
• Development is distributed, self-organizing and split into fine-grained chunks, so that anyone who wants to contribute can find something they can do.
• Each contributor’s unique skills and insights can be used well – with Wikipedia, some will have expertise in one particular area, some will take on responsibility for editing, others for organization; similarly open source projects will have folk working on aspects of the core code, tracking bugs, supplying artwork, taking a role in advocacy etc.
• Distributed open source development has only been possible due to the efficiency of global communication that email provides, similarly Wikipedia has recognised that there needs to be a place (the discussion tab) where the text can be talked through as well as authored or edited.
• Large open source projects have needed fine grained version control systems (such as CVS and subversion), which can track the changes being made by a distributed team of authors, and allow a roll-back to an earlier version if errors are introduced, which is mirrored by Wikipedia’s History tab, essential for maintaining the integrity of the text, as well as recognizing individuals’ contributions.

The sort of personalisation which Web 2.0 fosters, in which users go far beyond the realms of choice from pre-determined lists or limited customizations into a dimension of active participation and action (Leadbeater 2004), is also very evident in the world of open source software, where end-users not only have the freedom to adapt the code to suit their own needs, but through involvement in the development of the code have an opportunity to contribute their own unique talents and insights for the common good.

This is not to say that Web 2.0 and Open Source are equivalent. There are key differences, which have particular relevance for those seeking to explore Web 2.0 in educational settings. Although Web 2.0 and Open Source are, by and large, free for the end users, there’s far greater freedom to adapt and tailor applications if schools host the open source implementations of Web 2.0 functionality themselves rather than signing up to the hosted services out there on the Internet which, configuration options apart, are provided as is. Given that schools are rarely the target market for Web 2.0 applications, not all functionality will be appropriate to the classroom. A school hosting its own Web 2.0 applications also won’t fall prey to vendor lock-in as and when the present penchant for beta-programmes draws to a close and continued hosting starts to require subscriptions. Alternative Web 2.0 business models, such as revenue through targeted advertising, might worry some schools, or indeed parents, especially where the school has no control over the adverts being displayed. Schools take seriously their duty to protect the children in their care, and the data pertaining to them, and thus it might not always be appropriate to entrust profile and usage data to third parties, who are unlikely to have cleared all their staff with the CRB.

Most importantly, hosting Web 2.0 open source applications in-house gives schools the control they need over the make-up of the social network with which their pupils will engage online, and of the content to which their pupils will be exposed. Not every photo on Flickr or post on Blogger is one which would be appropriate to access at school, and whilst many schools appear to take the line that this means the whole site needs blocking, far better surely is to provide the equivalent functionality within the school’s safe, nurturing ‘walled garden’. Whilst a school’s hosted Elgg might not provide quite the same sense of excitement as MySpace or Bebo, there surely is a place for learning how to use social networking and blogging safely in a controlled and monitored environment – digital cycling proficiency, I guess; furthermore in-house hosting like this allows the school to focus the use of these powerful tools on educational aims and objectives, supporting the broad curriculum of the school. I know many see part of the appeal of Web 2.0 as allowing children’s work to receive a wider audience, but Shibboleth authentication makes it possible to allow access to the walled garden for pupils at other schools, and there’s nothing to stop schools moving some of the private content out onto the public web for a wider audience without exposing individual pupil identities in this way.

There is, though, a downside to this. It’s only fair to admit that it’s far easier to sign up for an account on myspace or flickr than setting up webservers, databases, scripts etc for oneself. That said, this is easier now than it used to be, with Ubuntu making a Linux webserver within the reach of most school techies, and projects like openacademic.org all set to take most of the hassle out of configuration and integration. Aggregating hosting across a cluster of schools, or indeed across a whole local authority, as in Buckinghamshire, makes things easier still, and goes a long way to providing a more vibrant social network and wider audience. Technician time to look after a webserver and setup the applications isn’t significant, but neither is it free, nor indeed is the hardware to run all this, although this doesn’t have to be anything very special, and thus an in-house open-source version of Web 2.0 is actually more expensive than free, hosted third party applications, although the gains through adaptability and child/data protection make this modest cost one worth paying.

Whilst not every cool new Web 2.0 application has its open source equivalent that can be hosted on the school network in this way, many do, including some of the most important ones.

• Jabber (http://www.jabber.org/) provides a way for schools to host their own instant messaging system, providing similar functionality to MSN messenger or AOL-IM, also allowing voice over IP.
• SquirrelMail (http://www.squirrelmail.org/) is just one of a number of web-based email clients, that with a mailserver ticking away in the background, can provide a service similar to GoogleMail. There are plug-ins available for spam and virus filtering.
• MediaWiki (http://www.mediawiki.org) is the software on which Wikipedia (and a whole host of other wikis) runs, allowing schools or local authorities to set up their own wikis, perhaps as a child friendly encyclopaedia or, at staff level, for policy documents and collaborative lesson planning.
• Scuttle (http://scuttle.org/) allows a school to host its own social bookmark collection like del.ico.us, and even replicates del.icio.us’s API so that browser plugins will work seamlessly with this too.
• Gallery2 (http://gallery.menalto.com/) at it’s simplest lets a school host its digital photo collection online, but it also allows users to upload their own photos and comment on others photographs, providing much the same functionality as flickr, but letting the school retain full control of its images.
• Elgg (http://elgg.org) provides a whole host of key web 2.0 technologies, like blogging, e-portfolio space, RSS aggregation, folksonomy tagging, podcast hosting and feeds, and social networking.
• Although Moodle (http://moodle.org) doesn’t feel very Web 2.0, with teachers remaining firmly in control of course content, a number of modules provide Web 2.0 functionality within the integrated VLE, so for example there’s support for podcasts, RSS, wikis, blogs and folksonomy tagging, and Moodle’s Workshop module provides an effective way of managing peer assessment of students’ work.

In fact, Moodle’s underpinning social constructionist pedagogy, the view that learning is most effective when learners actively engage together to create knowledge artefacts embodying their shared understanding, has much in common with not only Web 2.0’s provision for groups of users sharing insights and ideas, but also the collaborative co-production of software that is at the heart of open source. Back in 1993, Cunningham, Duffy and Knuth, writing about ‘The Textbook Of The Future’, listed some of the characteristics of a learning environment that would promote social constructivism, and I think it’s quite clear that these are characteristic of open source development too:

• experience in knowledge construction, as not only open source programmers gain, but also those users who contribute to bug reporting, support forums, documentation wikis etc,
• appreciation of multiple perspectives, as the community based approach to development and support provides,
• realistic and relevant contexts, as open source programmers gain through solving real world problems,
• ownership and voice, again contributions, however minor, to code and user support provide such an opportunity in open source projects,
• a social experience, which because the code is open and developed through the active participation of a community, typically characterizes open source coding and testing,
• the use of different modes of representation, the same project has many facets, such as the coding, porting to other operating systems, the interface design, documentation, support, website, advocacy, etc.
• self awareness, as open source projects have captured people's imagination, provided the recognition of a peer group, and met the needs of a wider group rather than merely serving a corporate bottom-line.

If these are things which we’d like to see in our classrooms, then certainly Web 2.0 can go a long way to providing them, but how much better is it to use software which has itself been developed through, and to some extent has come to embody, just such values and aspirations.

References:

• Bacon, S & Dillon, T (2006), The potential of open source approaches for education, Bristol, Futurelab Becta (2005),
• Open source software in schools: a study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs, Coventry, Becta Cunningham,
• D, Duffy, T, & Knuth, R (1993), Textbook of the future, in McKnight, C (Ed), Hypertext: a psychological perspective, London, Ellis Horwood Leadbeater, C (2004),
• Personalisation through Participation, London, DEMOS Philips, S (2005),
• Modelling Open Source Software, paper presented at FLOSSIE 05, Bolton http://eduspaces.net/mberry/weblog/140721.html

The above was written by Miles Berry under a cc-by-nc-sa licence for the new edition of Terry Freedman’s “Coming of Age: an introduction to the new World Wide Web“.

Why is Open Source Software Free?

You will no doubt be aware that software is provided on a “licence” basis – the licence, which you agree to by clicking “I accept” when you install the software, limits what you are allowed to do with the software (for example, with proprietary software, you can’t copy the software, or hack it).

The “free to use” part of the licence on which OSS is based, is actually only one of four key “freedoms” that you get as a user when you decide to start using OSS software! These four are:

• The freedom to use the software for any purpose you like (free of charge)  
• The freedom to study and modify the software
• The freedom to copy the software
• The freedom to improve the software

Most users of course have no interest in tinkering around with the computer programming that makes up the software, and so in one sense, these freedoms are a bit irrelevant. However, they underpin the business case for making OSS available for free.

Because the “inner workings” of OSS is free to study and modify, this means that:

• Lots of developers can do this. A community development approach has proven to be a fast and very effective way to solve bugs and difficult technical problems. This gives OSS the potential to be very reliable and secure – no secrets, no secret ways to hack it.

• The systems use open standards, making it easy to get data out of one system into another (avoiding the data lock-ins that have been common in computing for many years).

So even though the typical user isn’t really interested in participating, it is comforting that OSS delivers these reassurances.

From a company perspective, though, why would a software developer make their software available on this basis? The answer is that most software companies make money out of the whole lifecycle of their customers’ use of the software – not just the “initial licence sale”. Customers need support with installation, user training, helpdesk services, upgrades, and so on – these are essential services that successful IT companies provide, and usually make up a much larger part of their earnings than the licence fee.

The OSS approach offers a great way to develop good software very quickly – an acceptable trade for the loss of the initial licence fee. Many large software companies (like IBM, Nokia and Sun) are moving over to this model.

However, we should say that a large number are not. In schools, the most commonly used software, from Microsoft, is not open source, and may well never be, although Microsoft are collaborating on some OSS development projects.

Incidentally, you may be thinking, “If OSS is so great, how come it hasn’t caught on already in the last 20 years or so of personal computing?” The answer to this is the internet – the OSS approach relies on community collaboration for its best outputs, and the internet has made this much much easier than before. This is why the OSS approach is growing fast at the moment, and why agencies such as Becta and UK Government believe it’s time for UK public institutions to seriously consider using it.

Why schools should use open source software

by Richard Stallman

There are general reasons why all computer users should insist on free software. It gives users the freedom to control their own computers—with proprietary software, the computer does what the software owner wants it to do, not what the software user wants it to do. Free software also gives users the freedom to cooperate with each other, to lead an upright life. These reasons apply to schools as they do to everyone.

But there are special reasons that apply to schools. They are the subject of this article.

First, free software can save the schools money. Even in the richest countries, schools are short of money. Free software gives schools, like other users, the freedom to copy and redistribute the software, so the school system can make copies for all the computers they have. In poor countries, this can help close the digital divide.

This obvious reason, while important, is rather shallow. And proprietary software developers can eliminate this disadvantage by donating copies to the schools. (Watch out!—a school that accepts this offer may have to pay for future upgrades.) So let's look at the deeper reasons.

School should teach students ways of life that will benefit society as a whole. They should promote the use of free software just as they promote recycling. If schools teach students free software, then the students will use free software after they graduate. This will help society as a whole escape from being dominated (and gouged) by megacorporations. Those corporations offer free samples to schools for the same reason tobacco companies distribute free cigarettes: to get children addicted (1). They will not give discounts to these students once they grow up and graduate.

Free software permits students to learn how software works. When students reach their teens, some of them want to learn everything there is to know about their computer system and its software. That is the age when people who will be good programmers should learn it. To learn to write software well, students need to read a lot of code and write a lot of code. They need to read and understand real programs that people really use. They will be intensely curious to read the source code of the programs that they use every day.

Proprietary software rejects their thirst for knowledge: it says, “The knowledge you want is a secret—learning is forbidden!” Free software encourages everyone to learn. The free software community rejects the “priesthood of technology”, which keeps the general public in ignorance of how technology works; we encourage students of any age and situation to read the source code and learn as much as they want to know. Schools that use free software will enable gifted programming students to advance.

The next reason for using free software in schools is on an even deeper level. We expect schools to teach students basic facts, and useful skills, but that is not their whole job. The most fundamental mission of schools is to teach people to be good citizens and good neighbors—to cooperate with others who need their help. In the area of computers, this means teaching them to share software. Elementary schools, above all, should tell their pupils, “If you bring software to school, you must share it with the other children.” Of course, the school must practice what it preaches: all the software installed by the school should be available for students to copy, take home, and redistribute further.

Teaching the students to use free software, and to participate in the free software community, is a hands-on civics lesson. It also teaches students the role model of public service rather than that of tycoons. All levels of school should use free software.

1. RJ Reynolds tobacco company was fined $15m in 2002 for handing out free samples of cigarettes at events attended by children. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/features/health/tobaccotrial/usa.htm.

The above is taken from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html

Copyright © 2003 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.