this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Free and Open Source Software
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We can make some headway by pushing govs to adopt OSS. The Italians have a law “public money → public code”. The whole public sector including public schools should be switching to open source. And part of that would compel contributions of some form. Whether it’s code contributions or payment for support. People should be demanding that their tax revenue is not wasted on software that does not enrich the commons. With profit-driven corporations it’s always a game where a number of variables have to be just right for the company. But the public sector is very much overlooked.
I recently looked at a Danish university and was disgusted with what I saw. They used MS Office and Google docs, and students were pushed to use those tools. They used Matlab not GNU Octave, because that’s what they saw industry using. Schools should be leading industry, not following it.
The main driving force behind use of proprietary software in educational institutions are the software companies themselves. They have an incentive in it. When the students graduate and join the workforce, their employers are more likely to choose the software that these new workers already know. So it's like an investment for software companies to get their software into the curriculum. They spend considerable money and effort into it. Regular people stand no chance in pushing for free software - mainly because most of them don't even care.
This is the unfortunate truth. Mathworks tools are heavily used in the engineering space, so it's an obvious choice for academia to teach.
As much as I try to get my company off of Matlab/Simulink, it's a challenge. Just so much legacy already written in it
I can’t agree. You could perhaps say Matlab is the default/non-critically-analyzed choice for academia. GNU Octave uses the same language as Matlab. A student who masters GNU Octave will be able to use Matlab just fine.
IIRC, Matlab’s significant difference is Simulink. So if a class actually intends to cover Simulink then it’d perhaps be fair enough for just that class to use Matlab. But even that’s not ideal. Ideal would be the school paying students to add what’s needed in GNU Octave.