Software & Education

Why software education? Don’t we have already universities teaching how to program different languages, such as Python, PHP or JavaScript? Software plays a fundamental role in education.

We do not support any political or ideological stance against any kind of software programs or corporations and other private editors, no matter what sort of license they use to distribute their software. With that said, most if not all of the software used by us is FOSS, which means Free and Open Source Software, but we can use proprietary software.

We believe in Open Source as a choice, not as a constraint.

Free Software or not?

We think that it makes sense to share code, to credit the technology that we use, to let people help us, to allow others to somehow build upon what we make or develop and to enable progress in general. We license our software under the GPLv3 and the vast majority of components that we use are Free and Open Source.

Educational institutions of all levels should use and teach Free Software because it is the only software that allows them to accomplish their essential mission: to propagate human knowledge and to teach students how to survive and strive on their community. The source code and the more or less informal methods used to create Free Software are part of human knowledge, as much as our cultural traditions.

Proprietary Software

On the contrary, proprietary software is secret, restricted knowledge, which is the absolute opposite of the mission of educational institutions. Free Software supports education, proprietary software forbids or at least restrains education, especially software education.

Worth noting the history of this type of software. When computers were bulky and very expensive, companies and individuals who needed them could only afford to lease them, with already installed software that was free to use.

In 1969, however, IBM started charging for its software. Nevertheless, it was not until 1983 during the court ruling of Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp that software became considered intellectual property and subject to copyright laws. This famous ruling changed how companies viewed software and laid the foundations for proprietary software.