Post on why educational institutes should use only free software

I think OpenVidu (https://demos.openvidu.io/) is also a good tool to include in the list. Institutions can host their instances of openvidu conference, classroom and webinar. It also has very developer friendly documentation that will encourage students interested in development to come up with innovations.

Did you use OpenVidu? How was your experience?

Suggest replacement of the already used software and how they give users freedom.

Education and software are a bit too all encompassing to suggest alternatives in an article. Practically every category of software is taught in educational institutions. And most of them have free software alternatives. Perhaps, a separate list of alternatives in each category can be prepared and published separately. (My field is electronics. That alone has more than a dozen categories of software with free software alternatives and arguments for freedom).

One important category of software in education is the software used to facilitate learning itself. I can suggest a few free software in this category:

• Learning Management System: Moodle

• Video classrooms/Chat rooms: Mentioned in the article

• Video: Open Broadcasting System (OBS)

• Library Management System: Koha

• Whiteboard: Openboard

• Mathematics: Geogebra (needs review of license)

The goal of the article will be to raise awareness on the dangers of proprietary software.

The biggest danger of proprietary software is centralization of personal information. You can expect the information to be consolidated to a few big players or actively traded as a commodity. This has damaging precedents to show us what can happen. For example, in medical industry impacting medical insurance premiums, and in financial industry - influencing individual ratings and widening economic gaps. All these essentially lead to a dystopian social credit system.

The same can be expected if centralized management systems are used for managing student information. The HR has to evaluate students for abilities that may not be reflected by marks. But I think the immediate future will be AI sifting through these data.

The same will be the case when students are trained to use proprietary software. Take for example CAD. Many CAD systems are switching over to online storage only option. This means that student work will be available online with proper tagging, for companies to evaluate their proficiency. This may be very unfair - since students often find inspiration outside of class to like something. Their in-class performance may not mean anything at all. (Let's be honest, we all had those subjects which we hated while in class, but fell in love with afterwards).

Having said all these, I don't personally think fear about proprietary software is a good way to sell free software - though it may be justified. My personal experience is that few people care about privacy, security, freedom etc (though they should). Many people retort with how user-unfriendly free software are, when informed about these issues. I feel that we should instead emphasize the advantage of free software more.

One such advantage is that free software inherently promotes learning. How do you truly understand something that you are allowed to use, but not inspect? Let me demonstrate with example of SPICE - an electronic circuit simulation software. The first step in having a solid base in electronics is to have a good intuitive understanding of Krichoff's laws (KVL & KCL). Unfortunately, our educational system rarely address this. One of the easiest ways to get this understanding is to study or implement a simulator. SPICE uses a technique called Newton-Raphson method to resolve circuit matrices using Krichoff's laws. Reading that code alone may give a good idea of how a circuit works.

We can provide general free software replacements. We don't have to be specific and exhaustive. In many fields of education, software is not required except for daily life basic things. If we want to emphasize why that software respects freedom, then we can write separate article on that category of software. For example <https://fsf.org.in/article/better-than-zoom/>. Your answer does tell us the complications. Thanks for the detailed comment.

Perhaps, a separate list of alternatives in each category can be prepared and published separately.

That is a good idea. Can you start making such a list? I am not much aware about all the categories in which software are used in education. Many fields might require very specific software for their purpose. In my field, there is no use of software, so I don't know much beyond the basics such as conducting lectures, uploading notes, recording lectures etc.

The biggest danger of proprietary software is centralization of personal information. You can expect the information to be consolidated to a few big players or actively traded as a commodity. This has damaging precedents to show us what can happen. For example, in medical industry impacting medical insurance premiums, and in financial industry - influencing individual ratings and widening economic gaps. All these essentially lead to a dystopian social credit system.

Let's add it in the draft.

The same can be expected if centralized management systems are used for managing student information. The HR has to evaluate students for abilities that may not be reflected by marks. But I think the immediate future will be AI sifting through these data.

The same will be the case when students are trained to use proprietary software. Take for example CAD. Many CAD systems are switching over to online storage only option. This means that student work will be available online with proper tagging, for companies to evaluate their proficiency. This may be very unfair - since students often find inspiration outside of class to like something. Their in-class performance may not mean anything at all.

Good point to add in the article.

One such advantage is that free software inherently promotes learning. How do you truly understand something that you are allowed to use, but not inspect? Let me demonstrate with example of SPICE - an electronic circuit simulation software. The first step in having a solid base in electronics is to have a good intuitive understanding of Krichoff's laws (KVL & KCL). Unfortunately, our educational system rarely address this. One of the easiest ways to get this understanding is to study or implement a simulator. SPICE uses a technique called Newton-Raphson method to resolve circuit matrices using Krichoff's laws. Reading that code alone may give a good idea of how a circuit works.

Good example to add.

Thanks a lot for your inputs.