Linux in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Minds, Social Justice

It's generally agreed that college and
university students should learn the fundamentals of information
technology, including the use of operating systems, office
application software and the Internet. It's quite another matter,
though, to pay for the necessary infrastructure--wired dormitories,
industrial-strength servers, lots of PCs around campus, and pricey
commercial software for student use. Now that Linux and open-source
office applications such as
AbiWord and
Gnumeric are
available for free, institutions of higher education can save big
money in software costs, and more than a few campuses and
university consortia are starting to take Linux seriously (see, for
example, Robiette 1999). They're discovering what Linux users
already know--namely, that Linux, compared to Microsoft Windows,
offers an unbeatable combination of advantages, including a zero
price tag, do-it-yourself flexibility, freedom from licensing
headaches, stability, performance, compliance with public
standards, interoperability with existing systems, and a design
that reduces the threat of computer viruses (see Prasad
1999).As I'll argue in this essay, there's much more at stake here
than money. In what follows, I'll argue that open source software
in general--and Linux in particiular--holds the key to the ability
of colleges and universities to retain their traditions of
scientific and scholarly excellence as they adapt to an
increasingly computerized world. By establishing Linux as
the international standard for academic
computing, institutions of higher education can directly address
challenges to the integrity of scientific research, do a better job
of preparing students for a world of rapidly changing technology,
and combat the growing and disturbing disparities in access to
information technology. The following sections detail the case for
Linux in higher education--a case that, in my view, amounts to a
moral imperative.Closed-Source Software in Science? Goodbye,
VerifiabilitySince science's earliest days, the enterprise has been based
on a gift-economy notion very much like that underlying
open- source
software: scientists receive credit and prestige for their
discoveries, but they do not receive ownership
of them. On the contrary, scientists are expected to publish their
findings in open, public journals, which are accessible to all.
These journals print scientific articles only after a submission
passes peer review, in which a scientist's
peers scrutinize all of the assumptions and calculations that
produced the conclusions. The journal's editor will publish a
scientific article only when the peer reviewers conclude that the
underlying methods are sound. To be sure, the system doesn't always
work perfectly, but--like democracy--it is clearly superior to its
alternatives.Increasingly, scientists are beginning to see that their use
of closed-source software poses a profound threat to the integrity
of science (Kiernan 1999). Computer software is increasingly used
to analyze research results or simulate real-world systems.
However, scientists rarely make their software available to other
scientists for scrutiny--and even if they did, they often used
closed-source programs in which the underlying source code is
protected by copyright and trade secrecy claims. But this practice
strikes at the heart of science, namely, the notion of
verifiability. To be accepted as valid, all
calculations and assumptions that go into a given scientific
assumption must be open to public scrutiny. Yet closed-source
software makes such scrutiny impossible.These are the simple facts, from which Dan Gazelter, a
professor of biochemistry at Notre Dame University, draws the
following, compelling conclusion: scientists are
positively obligated to
use open-source software, and what is more, the future of an
increasingly computerized scientific enterprise may well depend on
their decision to do so (Gezelter 1999; cf. Wilson 1999).
Increasingly, scientists and university librarians are developing
clearinghouses and large-scale development projects to create more
open-source alternatives for use in higher education (see the
Open Science
Project and
oss4lib).But the use of open-source software is insufficient. If the
future of science depends on scientists' use of open-source
software, one can very well argue that colleges and universities
are under a positive obligation to move away from closed-source
computing infrastructures as well as closed-
source software. Consider this: many of the instructions in
computer programs do little more than issue directives to the
operating system; this is done by means of the operating system's
application programming interface (API). To
verify scientific software fully, the scientific community may need
to examine the program's interaction with the operating system. Yet
Microsoft refuses to document the Windows API fully and regards the
Windows source code as an immensely valuable trade secret. What is
more, Microsoft has taken the lead in lobbying for proposed
changes to the U.S.
commercial code that would effectively criminalize reverse
engineering.It's not enough for scientists to use open-source software;
they must also use an open-source operating system. Colleges and
universities can help to assure the ubiquity of open-source
software and operating system usage in science by moving to Linux
as an international standard for academic computing.Computer Literacy, Yes--But What Kind of
Computer Literacy?Let's turn from professors to students and examine another
area in which the use of commercial, closed-source software is
rapidly growing: the computer literacy curriculum. Even if it is
admitted that open-source software is needed at the research level,
skeptics will counter that colleges and universities do not exist
in a vacuum. Whether we like Microsoft or not, they will argue, we
still need to teach students how to use the software they will
encounter after they graduate--and that means Microsoft Windows and
Microsoft Office. Among those pushing for this type of computer
literacy instruction are local businesses, which hope to avoid
paying the enormous costs needed to train their employees to use
such software effectively. Increasingly, computer literacy
instruction looks like a Windows and Office training seminar. Not
surprisingly, Microsoft is taking advantage of this situation by
cutting
deals with colleges and universities that provide every
enrolled student with licensed copies of Microsoft software. In
response to this assertion, I argue that a focus on Windows and
Office skills is the wrong type of computer literacy instruction at
the college and university level. In addition, I argue, it fails to
serve the needs of business.Is a focus on Microsoft Windows and Office skills the right
kind of computer literacy instruction at the college and university
level? If you accept the conclusions of a major national report
that reflects a growing consensus among computer literacy
educators, the answer is "No." The report, titled
Being
Fluent with Information Technology(National Research
Council 1999), is the report of the U.S. National Research
Council's Committee on Information Technology Literacy and
represents the best thinking of the leading experts in the field.
In brief, the report rejects a narrow focus on skills-based
training for the following reasons:

• Employers may indeed realize reduced training costs if
  college graduates know how to use Windows and Microsoft Office, but
  these gains are short-lived; for example, Microsoft frequently
  introduces new versions with additional features and altered
  procedures. An education that focuses on version-specific software
  skills will produce graduates who may very well be able to use
  Office 97, but these same graduates may lack the deeper conceptual
  knowledge that would enable them to move smoothly to Office 2000 or
  some other office software suite.
• Given that the practice of democracy depends on an informed
  citizenry, colleges and universities possess a positive obligation
  to acquaint students with a conceptual understanding of information
  technology (IT), one that goes beyond "which button to press" in
  Microsoft Office. Graduates should know enough about IT to form
  opinions on the compelling IT-driven issues of our day, including
  the growing threat to privacy rights, the risks posed by the
  software industry's campaign to rewrite intellectual property law
  and much more.
• The pace of technological innovation in the software industry
  is so rapid that the "which-button-to-press" training today's
  first-year students receive will be laughably obsolete by the time
  they graduate. Colleges and universities should equip students not
  only with computer usage skills, but what is more, the conceptual
  knowledge and understanding that will enable them to learn how to
  apply new technologies in short order.

Recognizing these facts, the authors of Being
Fluent with Information Technology conclude that a
computer literacy curriculum focusing on skills alone is
insufficient. The ideal curriculum, they argue, would equip
students with computer fluency, a "robust
understanding of what is needed to use information technology
effectively across a range of applications" (14). In addition to
possessing the essential skills of software usage, computer-fluent
individuals can apply information technology in novel
situations--and what is more, they can understand the consequences
of doing so. As the authors observe, "these capabilities transcend
particular software and hardware applications" (17). Equally
essential to computer fluency is the mastering of fundamental
computer concepts, such as the difference
between absolute and relative cell references in an electronic
spreadsheet program.If computer fluency is indeed a desirable goal, then it
follows that colleges and universities can and should base their
curricula on products other than Microsoft's. A student who learns
the fundamental concepts of spreadsheet usage from Gnumeric,
admittedly, may not know which key to press when confronted with
Microsoft Office. However, computer literacy instruction should not
focus on which key to press, but rather on the
concepts that underlie the use of computer
software. A student who fully understands the
concepts of absolute and relative cell
references will experience little difficulty learning Microsoft
Excel; she will quickly learn which key to press. Indeed, asking
students to move to a different vendors' spreadsheet application
may well be the best way to test whether students have acquired the
desired computer fluency. In contrast, a student whose computer
literacy instruction emphasized Excel skills rather than the
transcendent concepts of software usage may require a round of
costly retraining when the next version of Excel is
released.From the foregoing argument, one can conclude that colleges
and universities can well serve the goals of computer literacy
education by moving to a Linux standard. We should teach the
concepts of operating system and office
software usage, and there is no reason to use expensive, commercial
products for this purpose. At higher curricular levels, colleges
and universities are arguably under a positive obligation to move
away from closed source software and proprietary computing
infrastructures (Vermeer 1998). Increasingly, it is not only
scientists who must understand the details of operating systems and
computing networks; advanced research in virtually every field of
scholarship inevitably requires the type of intermediate to
advanced understanding of information technology that was formerly
possessed only by computer science graduates. In this context,
open-source operating systems and networking infrastructures offer
a significant advantage: they are open to dissection, analysis, and
scrutiny in ways not possible with closed-source
architectures.Addressing the Digital DivideLet's leave the campus entirely and consider the broader
society. And what's going on is troubling. There's an increasing
gulf separating the IT-literate "haves" and "have-nots." Over the
past 35 years, the income ratio separating the world's richest from
the world's poorest nations has nearly tripled (Watkins 1999). In
general, familiarity with IT and access to IT are associated with
the adaptability needed to cope with rapid social and economic
change. With this adaptability comes greater earning power.
Conversely, lack of familiarity and access are associated with flat
or declining incomes. What is more, this disparity in IT
literacy--the so-called "Digital Divide--tends to line up not only
with ethnic divisions in the U.S., but also with the widening
global gulf between the economies of the North and those of the
South (Vee 1999).If IT has helped to generate the problem, it may also offer a
solution, in the form of Internet-mediated distance education.
Using distance education, colleges and universities may be able to
extend educational opportunities to precisely the areas that are
poorly served by colleges and universities today, such as the inner
cities and impoverished rural areas. But academia may not be able
to succeed if distance education is hijacked by commercial vendors,
who are bent on extracting lucrative profits from what they see as
a huge and growing market. Already, they are pushing universities
to adopt policies that rob professors of their right to the
intellectual property produced in the classroom, so that this
property can be packaged and sold to commercial distance education
vendors (Noble 1998).Distance education cannot succeed in impoverished areas of
the U.S., let alone the Third World, if students and schools are
forced to pay commercial software licensing fees and copyright fees
in addition to the cost of computer hardware and network
connections. The use of commercial operating systems and commercial
applications for distance education is impossible to justify when
stable, high-quality products are available from the open-source
community. This is precisely the reasoning that led Mexican
government officials to choose Linux and the GNOME desktop as the
foundation for a new push to place computers in Mexican schools
(Kahney 1998). The economies of Linux are no less relevant to
underfunded schools in rural and inner-city settings in the U.S.
(Dean 1999). Adopting commercial, closed-source software as the
infrastructure for distance education amounts to a slap in the face
to the poor.Joining the Movement for Social JusticeWere colleges and universities to move to a Linux standard
for academic computing, they would soon become full participants in
a growing movement to use open-source software as a means of
achieving social justice worldwide. They would become engines of
open-source software development -- and the results could make a
genuine difference in helping to remedy international inequities in
access to information technology.If you're skeptical of this claim, consider the Littlefish
project (Frazer and Brown 1999). In brief, Littlefish is an open-
source project that seeks to develop license-free patient
information software for use in rural and Third World settings. In
such settings, the use of commercial software is impossible, and
not just because of the cost; the vendors of commercial patient
information software have little interest in supporting users in
remote or impoverished locales. Accordingly, part of the Littlefish
project's goal is not only to create high-quality, open-source
patient information software, but what is more, to create a
worldwide community of practitioners who possess and are eager to
share the expertise needed to implement
effective patient-tracking systems, even under conditions of
extreme poverty and geographic isolation. Does this effort matter?
The answer is found in one simple statistic: 97 percent of
childhood deaths occur in developing countries. Effective patient
information systems could help to reduce this mortality
significantly.Arguably, open-source software holds the key to addressing
significant issues of social justice and economic development
worldwide (Vee 1999). Accordingly, colleges and universities should
do all they can to foster open-source software development, and
this purpose would be admirably served by adopting Linux as the
international standard for computing in higher education.Linux: The New International Standard for
Computing in Higher EducationI'm fully aware that moving to a Linux standard would pose
new and difficult challenges for colleges and universities; for one
thing, Linux isn't the easiest operating system to learn, and
maintenance costs could soar as students meddle with system
configurations and wind up with unbootable systems. Still, Linux
distributors are working hard to make Linux easier to install and
use. As the GNOME and KDE desktops reach maturity, they will open
the use of Linux to a much broader audience. But most importantly,
the very nature of Linux as an open-source operating system will
enable colleges and universities to create and distribute
customized Linux distributions (for an example, take a look at
CAEN
Linux, a version of Red Hat 6.0 that's customized for
University of Michigan e-school students). These "educational
versions" of Linux will include pre-configured system and network
settings that are designed to work seamlessly and transparently
with the campus computing network, eliminating the need for
students to acquire system and network administration
skills.Perhaps the best argument for moving to the Linux standard,
however, comes from a consideration of what may happen if current
trends continue. Microsoft is making increasing inroads into the
academic computing market, largely on the strength of
multi-million dollar deals that
make Microsoft software available to all registered students.
Microsoft has all but taken over academic computing, save on the
server end. Colleges and universities have become yet another
stepping-stone to Microsoft's stranglehold on the world market for
Intel-based operating systems and application software.I am well aware that many academics who are sympathetic to
Linux are put off by what they see as "gratuitious
Microsoft-bashing" by Linux advocates, but the bashing is far from
gratuitous; indeed, there is ample evidence--supplied by none other
than Microsoft itself--that the firm is considering measures that
would drive Linux out of the marketplace, just as Microsoft has
similarly destroyed earlier competitors. The so-called
Halloween
documents (Harmon and Markoff 1998), released to the Internet by an
unknown source within the company, disclose a plan to counter Linux
by "de-commoditizing" the public protocols that currently form the
basis of campus computing networks and the Internet and will in the
future provide the infrastructure for distance education.What is meant by "de-commoditizing" public networking
protocols? Currently, such protocols, such as the Domain Name
System (DNS), are "commodities", in Microsoft's terminology, in the
sense that they are standardized and publicly available. By adding
proprietary extensions to these protocols, Microsoft hopes to make
the use of non-Microsoft software more costly to users, even as the
use of Microsoft software becomes more convenient. Microsoft's
internal documents make it clear that the firm intends to introduce
such extensions, not because doing so is in their customer's best
interest or would improve their products, but because such
extensions could prove effective in pushing Linux out of the
marketplace.To be sure, Microsoft disavows these documents and rejects
the assertion that they accurately characterize the firm's
intentions. However, Microsoft's critics argue that the company has
played this game for years, and only the naïve would believe
that it will no longer continue to do so. The company stands
accused in a U.S. Federal Court of using similar tactics against
its competitors in the past; if it wins, which seems increasingly
likely, the firm's attorneys will no doubt advise the company's
executives that it is free to pursue such tactics against new
competitors as well--and currently, Microsoft's most vigorous
competition stems from the open-source community.In my opinion, the very fact that someone inside Microsoft
considered such tactics is reason alone to argue that Microsoft
software has no place in academic computing. I realize the software
marketplace is a rough-and-tumble world, and hardball tactics are
commonplace. Still, Microsoft doesn't seem to know where the line
lies between aggressive competition and reprehensible, potentially
illegal actions that result in the annihilation of anyone with the
temerity to compete with the company--and at incalculable cost to
consumers and the general public. For example, Microsoft is taking
the lead to lobby for new legislation that will rewrite copyright
laws--and the results threaten the very existence of
well-established conceptions of fair use and reverse engineering,
practices on which university research and education are deeply
dependent. Given that Microsoft is involved in a variety of
activities that threaten the very existence of open intellectual
exchange in colleges and universities, they have every reason to do
nothing to advance the interests of Microsoft, but in contrast, to
do everything they can to advance the development of Linux.In sum, the survival of open-source software in general, and
Linux in particular, may prove essential to the preservation of the
integrity of science, the effectiveness of computer literacy
instruction, and the reduction of the digital divide. Colleges and
universities are under a positive obligation, which I believe
amounts to a moral imperative, to reject the growing role of
commercial software in academic computing, and to transform
themselves by the thousands, worldwide, into vigorous centers of
open-source software development.Bryan Pfaffenberger is a professor in the University of
Virginia's new Media Studies program, where his responsibilities
include developing and teaching UVa's new University-wide computer
literacy course (Media Studies 110). His works on Linux include
Linux Clearly Explained (Morgan Kaufmann) and
Mastering GNOME (Sybex).
How to Get Involved

• Mail copies of this article to deans, department chairs and
  everyone involved in your campuses' academic computing
  system
• If you know of open-source software that could prove useful
  to scientists, share it. The
  Open Science
  Project (http://www.openscience.org) is a clearinghouse for
  open-source software in a variety of scientific and scholarly
  disciplines, ranging from acoustics and anthropology to physics and
  zoology. Also see
  Scientific
  Applications on Linux
  (http://sal.kachinatech.com/index.shtml).
• Support the push to distribute Linux on college and
  university campuses. Students at the
  University of
  Michigan gave away 2000 copies of StarOffice and Red Hat
  6.1. If you're a student,
  organize
  a local Linux User's Group (LUG) and do the same on your
  campus.
• Work to transform your college or university into a
  Microsoft-free
  environment. Tell fellow students, colleagues and
  administrators why the
  actions of Microsoft in the
  marketplace are incommensurate with the ideals and values
  of higher education, scientific progress, and social justice on a
  global scale.
• Join organizations fighting for civil liberties in
  cyberspace, including Computer
  Professionals for Social Responsibility and the
  Electronic Frontier
  Foundation.

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