Non-free software bad for students, says Richard Stallman

Updated on: Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Free software guru Mr Richard Stallman on Tuesday urged educationists to abandon proprietary software in schools and colleges “as it defeats the very purpose of education.”

“A child between 10 and 13 who has a natural talent for computer programming needs to read and write a lot of codes. Proprietary programmes do not reveal their codes,” Mr Stallman said, inaugurating the decennial lecture series of the KMEA Engineering College at Edathala, near here.

Mr Stallman said many proprietary programmes are distributed free of cost these days in schools but this was a ploy to make s/he a slave of these programmes.

“Blocking free distribution of a programme that helps work is nothing but unethical.

“Using a free software will benefit the schools in three ways. Apart from saving money, it serves a social mission as education aims to create socially responsible citizens and it

never holds back any programming info from the child,” he said.


Mr Stallman said he realized in 1983 that he should have his freedom and so turned to champion the cause of free software.

Mr Stallman also inaugurated an FTP server to host free software programmes at the college.
   

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