I’m a bit of a free software activist. Okay, that was a bit of an understatement. I’m sort of a big free software activist. Big as in “I care a lot,” not in that I’m well known (I’m not). I’m not talking about price either (though that is a factor), I’m talking about freedom. Make a quick web-search for free/libre software to see what I’m talking about. At any rate, I have a very strong belief that this should be the software of education (and governments) for a variety of reasons. Others have said it better than me but I’m going to try to say it simply: Have you ever not been able to open a file because you didn’t own the particular program to open it? File formats are often the last three letters after the “.” on the end of your file (like .doc, or .pdf). If you’ve ever encountered a weird file format and not been able to access the data within unless you spent money on a program then it’s very likely that the program you need to purchase, and the file type you received are not free/libre. Why would this be important for education (and government)?
My sister-in-law uses free/libre tools and file formats to write her papers for college (LibreOffice is one example: https://www.libreoffice.org/). I’ve used these very same tools to get through my graduate degree (and soon my PHD). They work well and, as an added bonus, they’re free/libre, meaning anyone can open them — but not everyone accepts them. Her school purchased a web-based tool for online submission of papers, but it doesn’t accept the free/libre .odf format that anyone can read. (The program can write in other file formats, but that’s another issue for another day). So, my sister-in-law frantically calls me, worried that she’s not going to be able to turn in the paper she wrote for her class because she hasn’t purchased the expensive/locked-down software “needed” (but not really needed) to submit her assignment to the expensive/locked-down program her school purchased. She figured it out (it’s very easy), but why did she have to? Education should be about freely sharing knowledge, not locking it up. Free/libre formats and software ensures that the data you create and share can always be accessed by others. Education should adopt free/libre file formats and software. (So should government, for the same reasons).