Free Software and Education
How Does Free Software Relate to Education?
Software freedom plays a fundamental role in education.
Educational institutions of all levels should use and teach Free
Software because it is the only software that allows them to accomplish
their essential missions: to disseminate human knowledge and to prepare
students to be good members of their community. The source code and the
methods of Free Software are part of human knowledge. On the contrary,
proprietary software is secret, restricted knowledge, which is the
opposite of the mission of educational institutions. Free Software
supports education, proprietary software forbids education.
Free Software is not just a technical question; it is an ethical,
social, and political question. It is a question of the human rights
that the users of software ought to have. Freedom and cooperation are
essential values of Free Software. The GNU System implements these
values and the principle of sharing, since sharing is good and
beneficial to human progress.
To learn more, see the
Free Software definition
and our article on
why software should be free
(as in freedom).
The Basics
The GNU Project was
launched
in 1983 by
Richard Stallman to develop a Free Libre operating system: the GNU
operating system. As a result, today it is possible for anyone to use a
computer in freedom.
In this six-minutes video Richard Stallman explains briefly and to
the point the principles of Free Software and how they connect to
education.
In Depth
We are looking for free educational games, or information about free games
that can be used for educational purposes. Contact
<education@gnu.org>
.