Date:23/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/23/stories/2008122360340500.htm

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Expert wants schools to use free software

Richard M. Stallman

HYDERABAD: Richard M. Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, has advised schools to use free software and not proprietary software as the latter increases dependence on products of a company and was against the spirit of education.

Talking to The Hindu here, he said there were four reasons why schools should use only free software and the most obvious one was to save money. Even in rich countries, schools do not have enough money. They should not waste their money paying for permission to run proprietary software.

The second reason was to teach to students to be good citizens of a strong, capable, independent, cooperating and free society. “That means--don’t teach them dependence on the products of a multinational corporation. Instead, teach them software that respects their freedom and puts the users in control. Teach them software that users are free to adapt, extend and maintain.” He said that there were proprietary software companies that offer gratis copies of their non-free software to schools. Why do they do this? They want to use schools to impose dependence on society. It was basically like giving needles to schools for “addictive drugs”. The students, who use proprietary software, develop dependence and graduate. But the same company would not offer the software for gratis after they graduate.

“The idea is to use schools to create dependence”, he added. Stating that schools should not do this as it basically went against their social mission—to educate next generation as good citizens of a “strong capable, cooperative and free society”.

Another “deeper reason” was that some people were born natural programmers. Around 10-13 years, they want to learn everything how a computer works.

In case of proprietary software, the teacher would tell the student that the source code was a secret. But the teacher could explain if the software was free and they could together figure out if the student had doubts.

The fourth cited by Mr. Stallman was that schools were supposed to teach not only facts and skills but also the spirit of goodwill and the habit to help the neighbour. “School is the place where you share knowledge with others.” Free software supports that concept while proprietary software forbids it. “There is no room for proprietary software in schools”, he asserted.