Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿
Just got an email from my boys' highschool's deputy principal asking me to purchase an Adobe creative suite license (with student discount) for them so they can take part in art classes.
I've responded asking how we can ensure that kids who can't or won't run Adobe products on their computers (e.g. Linux users) will be accommodated by the school's arts programme. I asked them to promote the open source options, Gimp, Krita, & Inkscape which are, in the HS context, totally serviceable.
翠星石
翠星石
Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿
@Suiseiseki I call them Libre to be clear - here's more detail: https://tech.oeru.org/foss-libresoftware-its-about-clarity-and-values They're also free (in both senses). But when I talk to school staff who've got no idea of what I mean by 'libre' or 'free', I use a term they'll recognise. When I establish rapport with them, I'll explain in more depth.
翠星石
Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿
@radicalresilience @herr_irrtum @Salty @trib @meejah @jdmcg for most things, Jack is no longer required. I don't use it myself. Modern Linuxen have pipewire for sound device management, which has a Jack compatibility layer if you want.
Radical Resilience Film
@lightweight @herr_irrtum @Salty @trib @meejah @jdmcg I believe that it has improved. for me it was too many things to learn, I was still getting to grips with Linux (grew up with computers but basically didn't use them for eight years until around 2016). Along with trying to survive and all the rest, I actually just wanted to make some music and faffing about with JACK was not high on my menu.
Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿
@radicalresilience @herr_irrtum @Salty @trib @meejah @jdmcg I've been using Ardour for my recording... it's not always straight forward, but it can do *anything*. And it's come a LONG way since 2017.
Radical Resilience Film
@herr_irrtum @lightweight @Salty @trib @meejah @jdmcg another example I find interesting is REAPER. It's not open source, it is however very cheaply available or even free as you are not forced to pay. And also has a great community, many possibilities to adapt it to your needs, extensions you can download, etc. Its ended up being my DAW of choice, as somehow I didn't really get on so well with Ardour back in 2017 when I tried it out.
Radical Resilience Film
@herr_irrtum @lightweight @Salty @trib @meejah @jdmcg particularly with video editing, yes kdenlive for example is great, easy to use, you can make a video with it (especially if it's not such a complex project or you don't have to do too much colour work or effects).
But kdenlive has it's limitations, also how it uses the hardware, so that for us for our current project it's not good enough. And there is no open source video editor that is.
In a learning setting I would agree that learning video editing with something open source like kdenlive could make sense. And for people who really want to work with it the option to then learn with something more powerful like davinci resolve or any of the others.
Herr Irrtum!
@trib@aus.social @meejah@mastodon.social @lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz @Salty@mastodon.nz @jdmcg@mastodon.nz
This is such an annoying conservative view, saying basically: Don't let the world spin around: Everybody uses it - it must be good.
Aber come on Pro Tools in music bizz? Are you living in the 90s? I know as a fact that those who still have to use Pro Tools curse it every day because sometime ALLWAYS doesn't work as supposed (I'm talking about a world famous studio in Berlin where David Bowie recorded).
Things like Blender wouldn't have a chance with your kind of "pragmatic" approach.
What I call pragmatic: When people can learn from a generic approach so they can adopt their knowledge to whatever tool by whatever maker they later use. Instead of forcing them to use only tools by a certain tool maker so they will never learn how to switch to another one.
meejah
@lightweight @Salty @jdmcg No schools should be teaching with proprietary products, IMO. Even if they're "free" (like Google crap).
Stephen Collins
@meejah @lightweight @Salty @jdmcg all this is true. You've no argument from me that providing FOSS first is the right way. Also, the *schools* should be paying for software they require students to use.
Just as most of the world uses Windows and Office, Adobe tools have become the standard in art and design and they're what universities will teach with and what employers will expect skills in.
I'm with you that we *should* be choosing FOSS; don't get me wrong. But a bunch of industries have ended up with particular corporate toolsets and holding our breath until we go red is likely not useful. It's pushing shit uphill with a pointy stick.
See also ProTools for music, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro and Da Vinci in cinema/TV, AutoDesk stuff in architecture, etc.
We should continue to advocate for FOSS, but also accept that there are some standard toolsets that have established themselves, even if we know there are (better) choices. Shouting (metaphorically speaking) “you should use Linux on the desktop and Libre Office” expresses a kind of belligerence FOSS advocates have become a little infamous for (and I have been particularly guilty of at times).
Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿
@Salty I gotta admit, it makes me quite angry to think that someone would take the side of the expensive, elitist, platform-restricted tool over the egalitarian, multi-platform, freely available, and easily viable tool set.
The traditional excuse: "this is what industry uses!" just doesn't wash. It's a farcical argument that's pandering to US corporate interests, and shows a lack of equivalence in many other aspects of EdTech where the 'industry tools' aren't available to schools.
Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿
@Salty @jdmcg The burden needs to go the other way. The free & #libre option must be the default. Let the kids choose to pay when they're older. The status quo is indistinguishable from a drug dealing business model. Schools aren't teaching principles, they're teaching proprietary vendor products. That's actually ethically and pedagogically indefensible.
Wait, "dumb" ends in "B"!?
@lightweight @jdmcg As much as I personally use Gimp & Inkscape myself I think being a teenager is hard enough without also being the kid who hasn't got Adobe like everyone else. Not to mention the teacher who has to try to teach with two different software packages.
I simply grit my teeth and paid for the license for our daughter ... Next year when she's at Uni, she can figure that out for herself.
Kōtare :tinoflag:
@lightweight oh yes. Have been through this. The staff looked at me like I'd crawled from the bottom of the sea.
Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿
@jdmcg yeah, gonna get in front of the staff on this one. Just forwarded the similar email I sent to the deputy principal I sent to the similar email from 2023, to which I received no useful response and suggested it'd be great to have more engagement this time around so I can assist CHS provide better equity of opportunity to their students, especially those surprisingly astute ones who choose to run Linux rather than an Adobe-supported platform.
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