University Rectors in Italy Promoting Proprietary Software

Last Tuesday, LJ.com published
the final
article in my seven-part series on how free software is being
used in various Italian schools to the benefit of both teachers and students.
Ironically, that same day, the Foundation of the
Conference of Rectors of Italian
Universities (CRUI)
announced an
initiative to allow all students in Italian universities "to use state
of the art IT tools to study and prepare their exams", as stated on the
Education page of

Microsoft's Italian Web site. In case you
are wondering what such tools may be, CRUI is talking about Microsoft
Windows XP and Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003. Italian students
will be able to purchase these products with discounts of up to 80%;
this translates to about 79.99 Euros for MS Office.

Although CRUI isn't an executive-level seller, it isn't a vanilla,
corner computer shop either. According to that same announcement, the
Foundation:

supports since 2001 the Conference of Italian Rectors
with the goal of contributing to the cultural development of the
Country, promoting the innovation of the national University
system... A relevant part of its work is just about usage and
diffusion of ICT in all areas of that system, from didactics to
administration.

The press release explains that the Foundation is looking at this
discount program with great enthusiasm, because it can contribute to the
innovation of teaching, something which is "a determining factor to
strengthen the competitivity of the whole University system". The
discounts should facilitate this because, again according to
the CRUI press release, "thanks to innovative solutions, Microsoft Office 2003 revolutionizes computer usage:
creating documents like letters, projects and school researches,
analyzing data, preparing multimedia presentations, sharing files and
interacting with fellow students are only a few of the many activities
that students can perform simply and quickly".

The simultaneous publication of this press release and my article on
the benefits of using free software in the same university/school system
isn't the only interesting part of the story. First of all,
the language in the CRUI announcement is similar to that used on the page of
Microsoft's Italian site that

advertises the discount; even if you don't speak Italian, the
correspondence is evident.

Secondly, two days after CRUI's release was published, two other
announcements were issued simultaneously. The
Linux User Group Roma
criticized
the Foundation's endorsement of the program because, although promoting
state of the art IT tools is surely a laudable initiative, it should
be based on pluralism instead of specific solutions from only one
(proprietary) supplier. A few hours later, the CRUI Foundation
published another press release titled
"They Forgot the
University" that denounces "the heavy cuts to the
budget of the State University System announced for next year".

Predictably, the Italian FOSS community, beginning with its teacher
members, is not pleased by CRUI's endorsement of Microsoft products.
LUG Roma already has launched
a
petition to ask that:

1. Free and Open Source Software is given equal status in all
   initiatives of CRUI and of the CRUI Foundation.
2. CRUI promote activities that encourage the Italian University
   Community to participate in the development of Free Information
   Technologies--free
   as in freedom, of course.

The Italian teachers I interviewed for the Linux in Italian Schools
series also are less than enthusiastic. The first fear of
Giancarlo
Dessi, the Slackware guru for the Professional Institute
Cettolini, Sardinia, is that this announcement by CRUI will flatten even more
the Italian IT culture on proprietary platforms and standard and keep it incomplete.
Sophia
Danesino, one of the architects of the e-learning portal of ITC
Peano in Turin, is of the same opinion.

Making this kind of proprietary deal in primary schools, Dessi adds,
would be questionable, but the damage could be limited. However, "at the University level, where
IT knowledge should mean something more than just writing a letter
with a word processor, it is harmful". From a strictly monetary point
of view, he concludes, the whole thing sounds even more absurd. "Why
not just tell students that there are software solutions whose
licens[ing] costs are always null?" Personally, I would like to add
that anything that can be installed and run decently only on new
computers really isn't free, as in beer.

Francesco P. Lovergine and Francesco Loseto, the
adult FOSS education
experts in Bari, also are
displeased. Lovergine hopes that, at least, this will be an occasion
to expose and start solving a general problem. Today, he notes,
software piracy is not only tolerated in Italian school and
universities; sometimes, proprietary software much more expensive than MS Office is
the only one that complies with the official requirements of
mandatory exam projects. But, none of these companies offers discounts
to students.

I also got some comments from other FOSS supporters in the Italian
university community. Alessandro Rubini, the co-author of Linux Device
Drivers who also worked as
Contract
Professor of Telecom and Networks Technologies at the
University of Pavia, isn't surprised by the announcement. But, he notes
that he was called to teach because he was competent, and he
gained that competence thanks to unrestricted access to source
code. Furthermore, while damaging to the reputation of the
Foundation, promoting discounts on MS Windows often will be useless,
as most students find it already installed when they buy
computers.

Giulio Bottazzi, an Associate
Professor of Economics who recently invited me to explain
OpenDocument to the
Sant'Anna
Laboratory of Economic Management
pointed out that market law forces Microsoft to
maximize its profits. Therefore, the only reason why the company would
reduce its prices when it still has almost complete control of this market is the
fact that these students "won't remain students forever; they will
grow, maybe graduate, become professionals, employees, business
people". Because it's already almost impossible not to use computers on
the job, if today's students are exposed only to
proprietary technology, "they will be willing to pay very high prices
to keep using it". So, there's nothing strange about Microsoft's wish to
lock in its future customers, Bottazzi concludes, but "why should the
University do the same? Above all, we should give our students the
tools to choose, not choose for them!"

Renzo Davoli,
Associate Professor of Computer
Science at the University of Bologna and
director of the
Masters in Free and Open Source Software
Technology program,
published
his opinion on the whole matter and sent to me this
English version:

The Rectors have more important matters to attend, so I hope that
this idea of transforming the CRUI Foundation website in[to] an advertising
billboard is an isolated initiative of some lower grade official within
the Foundation itself. In any case, it is important to remember that
the Foundation is not an official speaker of the Italian Universities,
like the
National University
Council, and its choices are not binding for any single institution. Consequently, this initiative
is just a lapse of style which in my opinion should be corrected, since
that page is self-denigrating at the eyes of anybody with a minimum of
culture. For the same reason, I respect the action of LUG Roma against
this initiative and I congratulate to them for their enthusiasm. However,
it is neither a law proposal nor an official Government position, so it
may be suitable to conserve one's energies for more important battles.

Waiting to See What Will Happen

I, too, think that it is highly probable that Foundation officers
simply don't know yet that alternatives to Microsoft exist. My recent school
articles have given me many first-hand confirmations that this
still is the case, at least among Italian education professionals. Over
the next few days, there surely will be time to establish direct contacts
between the Foundation and the national FOSS community to discuss more
actions on the same front. The purpose of this article simply is to
encourage such future discussions by showing that many Italian educators
already have the know-how to propose alternative solutions. In addition,
I am asking all LJ.com readers to help the Foundation. Please tell them,
either by e-mail (segreteriacrui@crui.it) or through
comments below, how FOSS is being used to great advantage in your
schools and universities.

As always, I welcome any direct feedback and information on these
matters. Thanks in advance for any such contributions, and thanks
to all the professors who contributed to this article.

Marco Fioretti is a hardware systems engineer interested in free
software both as an EDA platform and, as the current leader of the RULE
Project, as an efficient desktop. Marco lives with his family in Rome,
Italy.