Education Freedom: Growth of FOSS and Sharing (e.g. Open Access) in Educational Institutes
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-11 14:23:32 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-11 14:23:32 UTC
Education
-
Responding to student interest and a growing industry demand for workers with such skills, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is launching the nation’s first interdisciplinary minor in free and open source software and free culture.
-
Responding to student interest and a growing industry demand for workers with such skills, Rochester Institute of Technology is launching the nation’s first interdisciplinary minor in free and open source software and free culture.
Starting in Fall 2014, RIT’s School of Interactive Games and Media will offer the minor in free and open source software (FOSS) and free culture for students who want to develop a deep understanding of the processes, practices, technologies, and financial, legal and societal impacts of the FOSS and free culture movements.
-
With its continued focus on education, Google has launched Oppia (beta). The Open Source project is a free educational tool that lets anyone create online educational activities through the web interface. Interactivity is its strong suit. The interactive activities are called “explorations”.
-
Whatever you may have heard about hackers, the truth is they do something really, really well: discover. Hackers are motivated, resourceful, and creative. They get deeply into how things work, to the point that they know how to take control of them and change them into something else. This lets them re-think even big ideas because they can really dig to the bottom of how things function.
-
Schools in Romania are letting laptops gather dust, because the teachers don't know how to use Linux, the Romanian TV station Pro TV reports. Last year, supermarket chain Profi donated laptops running the Edubuntu Linux distributions to schools. In at least one of these schools, the laptops are still in the box and other schools have replaced the software by proprietary alternatives.
Open Access
-
The Tullahoma City School system has already made a considerable investment of time and energy into developing open source textbooks, and plans are in place to expand the program in the coming months.
-
Joining a herd of other scientific societies, today AAAS (publisher of ScienceInsider) announced that it will launch the organization’s first online, fully open-access journal early next year. The new journal, called Science Advances, will give authors another outlet for papers that they are willing to pay to make immediately free to the public.
-
Less than a week after AAAS, Science’s publisher, announced the launch of its first open-access online journal, Science Advances, Britain’s Royal Society has done the same. Royal Society Open Science, slated for launch later this year, will “provide a scalable publishing service, allowing the Society to publish all the high quality work it receives without the restrictions on scope, length or impact imposed by traditional journals,” a statement issued today says. The journal will cover life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer science.
-
SEVEN MONTHS ago I showed that Elsevier “open access” CC-BY papers were incompetently labelled (see http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2013/08/12/elsevier-charges-to-read-openaccess-articles/ and following blog posts), and under “Rights and Permissions” charging huge amounts of money.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- GNU/Linux in Laptops/Desktops Still Matters, It's Likely the Only Way to Achieve Software Freedom
- Software Freedom requires all sorts of things at the "OS level"
- Madame Streisand Wanted to Censor The Web, Instead She 'Created' a New Term, "Streisand Effect"
- It is basically an own goal
- Defending Women Isn't a Crime, Everybody Can Agree on That
- Their culture is unlike ours
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part VI - Influx of Spaniards and Portuguese Workers (+77%) at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, Led by the 'Alicante Mafia'
- There is now data supporting this assertion, new and complete data in fact
- Nobody is Safe at IBM (or Red Hat)
- There is no job security at IBM
- Bad faith: Hugo Roy knew FSFE impersonating FSF before French tribunal, colleagues deceived
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
-
- Media Blackout Reducing or Preventing Press Coverage of Microsoft Layoffs in 2026
- Worse yet, there will be gaslighting and deceit
- Gemini Links 04/03/2026: The Garnet Star, The Hunt, The SYN Attacks
- Links for the day
- The EPO's General Consultative Committee (GCC) Discussion Illuminates How Much Worse Things Have Gotten ("on Strike and Participated in the 'Meeting'")
- a videoconference - not a physical meeting - discussed EPO policies
- Free Software Foundation Supports Its Founder, Advertises His Talks in Switzerland
- When you suppress voices, assuming the reasons for suppression are bunk, it is always bound to backfire very badly
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 03, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, March 03, 2026
- Over 1,500 EPO Workers Went on Strike Last Week
- a new publication which celebrates some accomplishments of industrial actions and calls for further actions
- Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Failed to Detect Fraud in Law Firms... Until It Was Too Late
- Earlier today we contacted some more politicians about this and received mail from them as well
- Our EPO and IBM Coverage Bears Fruit
- In case insiders want to get in touch with us, please ensure or at least try doing so securely
- Links 03/03/2026: "Scam Altman in Damage Control" and Oil Traffic Disrupted
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/03/2026: Phones, LLMs, and Changes on the Web
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman Confirms Talk in Bern Next Week
- Dr. Stallman has just formally confirmed his third talk this month in Switzerland
- GNU/Linux at All-Time High in Guam
- there are many computers in that island
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 1 Out of 200: Claim No. KB-2024-001270 in a Nutshell
- abuse of process by a law firm working for an American who was arrested for strangling women and another American whose own spouse calls a "rapist"
- When EPO Team Managers (TMs) Are Harassing People Who Strictly Apply the European Patent Convention (EPC) in Patent Examination
- There are two strikes planned for this month
- Confirmed: Using Slop Gets You Fired
- Let the story of Benj Edwards be a cautionary tale
- Links 03/03/2026: "No one wants to read your AI slop" and "chatbots in the kill chain"
- Links for the day
- EPO and "Equivalent to More Than 100 Days of Strike"
- The industrial actions continue and already have a positive effect
- Streisand Effect, the Microsoft Way
- Microsoft has once again proven the Streisand Effect
- Keeping Track of IBM Layoffs in March 2026
- IBM depends on bribery
- GNU/Linux Measured at 7% in Yemen
- Windows is too hostile and dangerous
- Links 03/03/2026: Security Breaches, Iceland Wants EU Membership, and "Wall Street–Backed Lawmakers Want to Help Banks Gouge You"
- Links for the day
- Queensland Health Payroll System: IBM billion-dollar-blowout inquiry
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 02, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, March 02, 2026
- Gemini Links 03/03/2026: GrapheneOS and Keyboard Shortcuts
- Links for the day
- Tomorrow should be sunny (at long last!) and a generally productive dayProductive Week Ahead
- Tomorrow should be sunny (at long last!) and a generally productive day
- Only One Slopfarm Seems to Have Targeted "Linux" Today
- It certainly does feel like the slop hype is reaching the "late life crisis" and companies that benefited from this bubble are overdue for a day of reckoning
- Microsoft Mass Layoffs: Being Sacked at 1AM in the Morning
- Watch what happens to Microsoft employees who get pregnant
- Links 02/03/2026: More Social Control Media Bans, Climate Change Woes, and "Journalist With Germany's Deutsche Welle Arrested in Turkey"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 02/03/2026: Small Phones, "I 3D Printed My Brain", and "Managing 5 Servers at Once with tmux"
- Links for the day
- IBM is Trying to Hide Mass Layoffs, Not Only With NDAs and 'Scripted' LinkedIn Posts
- From what we can gather (screenshot above), today many people leave IBM and Red Hat
- Richard Stallman is Giving a Public Talk This Week (Friday in Lucerne School of Computer Science and Information Technology)
- His birthday is just around the corner.
- Windows Falls to New Low in World's Largest Population (India)
- Windows is now down to 7%
- Never Miss a Good Opportunity to Shut Up and Drink Coffee
- Threats come at a cost; each time you issue a threat you stigmatise yourself as a bully
- Last Month Matthew Garrett Said Ridiculous Things After His Spouse Had Called Him a "Rapist", Now He's Trying to Take the Site Offline and Put My Family in Prison
- The real issue of concern to him (and his alleged reputation) is the spouse and the matter is to be dealt with in America, not the UK
- Machine-Generated Legal Documents, Over 2,000 Pages Sent to Us Today Alone
- We now know that the papers we receive are produced using bots (algorithms)
- Reporting to Our Politicians/MPs the Failure of the SRA to Stop Hired Guns Who Help Americans (Men Who Attack Women and Nowadays Also Attack British Reporters)
- About a month ago my wife wrote to politicians to get the ball rolling
- The Topic Many People Don't Want to Talk or Write About
- "DEI" is inherently about making racial and gender patterns better reflect society's
- XBox is Virtually Dead Already, What Next Will Die at Microsoft?
- Now that there are mass layoffs at Microsoft datacentres it is not premature to speculate about what dies after XBox
- For the First Time, statCounter Measures Internet Explorer at 0.01% "Market Share"
- What Microsoft replaced it with is just a Chrome clone with extra spyware
- Was a Lot of "Windows" and "Unknown" in Iran Just GNU/Linux in Disguise?
- more than 1 in 10 desktop/laptop requests is estimated to be GNU/Linux
- "Here in the UK, GNU/Linux rose to all-time high at Windows' expense"
- Will this entail Software Freedom as well? This depends on all of us
- Links 02/03/2026: Claude Code Causes a Mexican Government Cyberattack, "London Repair Week" Noted
- Links for the day
- 2026 Microsoft Mass Layoffs in So-called 'AI' Datacentres, Why Doesn't the Mainstream Media Cover The News?
- What does this tell us about the state of the media?
- Don't Fall for "Top X Law Firms" in "Discipline Y", They Pay $Z to Get False Endorsement/s
- It's a scheme, a scam, an elaborate fraud
- More Publishers Have Turned From Slop Boosters Into Slop Sceptics and Critics
- There's a "hidden cost" when one participates (for profit) in "pump and dump" schemes
- TeX Live Has New Release, But Planet Debian Won't Tell You That
- It 'unpersoned' the developer
- LLM Slop Does Not Know People (It Knows Nothing) and Cannot Distinguish Between People. It's a Recipe for Disaster.
- no way of knowing who's who
- "Over 1,100 Law Firms Gone in Five Years" in the United Kingdom (UK) Alone
- There are basically way too many lawyers (looking for "business", e.g. threats and lawfare) and not enough positions to fill
- Microsoft FUD From Microsoft Site Helps Distract From Actual Microsoft Back Doors
- Published on a Sunday
- Free Software Foundation Needs to Become More Active in Europe to Avoid Impersonation by Microsoft-Sponsored Groups
- So far we've hardly seen the FSF saying anything at all about the US president
- Links 02/03/2026: "Not Envious of Billionaires" and Palantir SLAPPs "Swiss Magazine For Accurately Reporting That The Swiss Government Didn't Want Palantir"
- Links for the day
- There Has Never Been a Better Time to Quit Social Control Media
- Those networks are selling something. And that something is not peace because peace does not sell "attention".
- Microsoft Users Drowning in Slop, If They Complain Microsoft Censors Them
- Like an authoritarian regime
- IBM is Killing Red Hat's Portfolio - Including Linux - to Prop Up Ponzi Scheme ("AI")
- IBM is killing Red Hat
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 01, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, March 01, 2026
- Speed of Sites Matters
- Being easily accessible all the time matters to us
- Gemini Links 02/03/2026: Weird Phone Calls, Small Phones, and Exploring Racket
- Links for the day
- Dr. Andy Farnell on "Good Tech"
- in the age of "rent everything" and "own nothing"
