I think all of that stuff is easily replaceable, in the context of a CS curriculum at the very least, if only other people cared a bit. I took one class that required use of a proprietary circuit modeling program that I ran via Wine, but other than that I did not have to use any proprietary software to complete my CS coursework.
The difficulty with replacing proprietary hardware is that, in some cases, the companies donate it. So you'll have a "dell lab" sponsored by Dell, and it's hard to convince a school to say no to the free equipment and go with another solution
Re:GitHub goes to school
by unethical_ban on Monday February 10, 2014 @05:46PM
(#7214358)
Well, proprietary textbooks about ancient math is kind of silly.
And Blackboard is anti-educational. Have you ever tried to use it?
If it's not anti-educational, it's an affront to education.
Online education is an actually interesting problem space in the world and Blackboard, Desire 2 Learn and some horseshit software from Oracle is like the best stuff out there. It's terrible.
You're welcome to your principles, but they're not always practical.