You know, there's a saying that we have all heard,
I mean, a million times. There is no such thing
as a free lunch. It's a classic for a reason.
Usually when something's presented as free, you
are the product or there's a catch so big it
just ruins the whole deal. Exactly. And that's
really where I want to start today because we're
looking at a topic that on the surface claims
to break that rule. We're talking about open
source technology. Right. And if you're listening
to this thinking, OK, great free software, I
can save 50 bucks. I just, I need you to pause.
Right, because if you're only looking at this
through the lens of your wallet, you are missing
the entire point. So we're jumping into a deep
dive on this really fascinating 2025 analysis
by Gary Ackerman over at hackscience .education.
He revisits years of research on tech in schools,
and what he finds is, well... It's complicated.
It is. It's a story about freedom, about control,
and a really strange paradox that's happening
in, of all places, rural America. It is. And
our mission today is to take you past that free
beer headline. We need to understand the two
pillars of open source, the real ones, transparency
and freedom. And Ackerman uses this analogy that,
I'll be honest, I can't stop thinking about it.
He says, we need to stop looking at software
as a product we buy off a shelf and start looking
at it as a community cookbook. It's a brilliant
comparison. And I promise, by the time we wrap
up, that cookbook idea is going to completely
change how you look at every app on your phone.
OK, so let's get the definitions out of the way
so we get to the good stuff. When we say open
source in this context like formal education
enterprise systems, What are we actually talking
about? Is this just, you know, piracy with a
better marketing team? No, definitely not piracy.
It's actually highly regulated, but in a completely
different way than we're used to. Ackerman, he
breaks it down into three key characteristics.
The first one is the one everyone knows. Free
use and acquisition. Which means zero dollars,
the free part. Basically, you don't buy a license.
You don't pay a subscription fee. You can go
online, find a massive platform for, say, online
learning and just... Take it. You just download
it. Install it. It's yours. OK, so that's the
free beer part. But you said there were two pillars,
transparency and freedom. How is that different
from just free? This is the critical shift. Think
about the software you use at work, a big proprietary
system. It's a black box, right? You press a
button and the machine does something, but you
have no idea how it does it. You can't see the
code. The hood of the car is welded shut. Right.
And if the engine starts making a weird noise,
I can't fix it. I have to call the dealer. Precisely.
Open source relies on transparency. You get access
to the source code. You can pop the hood. You
can see every single gear and piston. Which I'm
guessing leads to the third thing. Freedom. And
this is the big one. Freedom here doesn't mean
freedom from payment. It means the freedom to
create what are called derivative works. Derivative
works. That sounds like a lot of legal jargon.
Can you break that down for us? It means you
can change the recipe. If you download this software
and you hate the way the gradebook looks, or
maybe you need it to run on a very specific old
server you have in the basement, you have the
legal right to go in and rewrite the code to
make it do that. You're not just a consumer.
You can be a co -creator. That is a massive shift
in the power dynamic. You go from, I hope this
app updates soon to fix this bug to, I'm going
to fix this bug myself. That's it. But I can
just hear the skeptics listening right now thinking,
wait a minute, if everyone is just rewriting
the code, doesn't that just create chaos? It
does sound a bit like the Wild West. And it would
be, if not for the licensing. Ackerman points
this out very clearly. This isn't lawless. It's
governed by things like the GNU general public
license or the Apache license. I've definitely
seen those names in the terms and conditions
that I scroll past without reading. We all do.
But those licenses are basically the constitution
of this world. They say, you're free to use this
and you're free to change this, but often you
must share your changes back with the community.
Ah, so it keeps the ecosystem healthy. It does.
It prevents it from splintering into chaos. Okay,
so we have the theory. We have transparency,
freedom, the right to tinker. Let's bring this
down to Earth. The source material focuses so
heavily on this divide between rural, suburban,
and urban schools. Why rural schools specifically?
Because context is everything. I mean, a rural
school leader is playing a completely different
game than their urban counterparts. The most
obvious factor is just the budget. I imagine
the tax base in a small farming community looks
a little different from downtown Chicago. Night
and day. So on the surface, open source looks
like the holy grail for these schools. Minimal
costs. Exactly. If you can get an enterprise
level system for zero dollars, well that frees
up money for teachers, for books, for heating
the building. It seems like a no -brainer, but
I want to get specific here. Ackerman lists three
case studies in the analysis like actual examples
of schools using these tools. I think we should
walk through them because they highlight that
this isn't just about saving a few bucks. No,
not at all. These examples prove that free can
actually mean better. So first up is Moodle.
I feel like anyone who's been near a university
in the last 10 years probably knows Moodle. It's
a powerhouse. It's an LMSL learning management
system. And in this case study, a school switched
to Moodle to replace a proprietary system. But
the backstory is it's terrifying. Let me guess.
They were using the free version of a paid product.
Exactly, and we've all been there. You sign up
for the free tier and then you realize all the
features you actually need are locked behind
a paywall. Upgrade to Pro to export your data.
That classic. It was so much worse than that.
This school faced actual data loss. They had
no support. Can you imagine being a principal
and telling your teachers, sorry, all those grades
and lesson plans you uploaded, they're just gone
and the company won't pick up the phone because
we're not paying customers. That is an absolute
nightmare. So they switched to Moodle. They did.
And because Moodle is open source, they own their
instance. No data limits, no premium tiers. They
used it for everything, online classrooms, professional
development, and they even customized it to integrate
perfectly with their Chromebooks. So they didn't
just save money, they regained control. That's
the key takeaway, security through ownership.
Okay, example number two, Mahara. This one I'm
less familiar with. Mahara is an e -portfolio
platform. It's a place where students can showcase
their work over time. And this example is interesting
because it shows the power of connecting the
plumbing. What do you mean by that? Well, have
you ever tried to get two apps from two completely
different companies to talk to each other? It's
usually impossible. Or you have to use some weird
third -party glue that breaks every other week.
Right. So this school used Mahara alongside Moodle.
Because both are open source, they could actually
go into the code and build a bridge between them.
They created what they called a single online
space. So a student submits a project in their
Moodle class, and it just flows right into their
portfolio in Mahara. Seamlessly, that's a user
experience that even some of the really expensive
proprietary suites struggle to deliver. And they
built it themselves because they had the freedom
to modify the tools. That's really impressive.
OK, the third one. It involves something we all
got very, very familiar with in 2020, video conferencing.
The tool is called Jitsi. Jitsi, yes. It's an
open source alternative to Zoom or Teams. This
case study was about a school alliance that needed
synchronous distance learning. Now usually I
think people assume the open source video tool
is going to be, you know, grainy, a bit glitchy.
That's the stereotype. But in this case, they
switched to Jitsi because the proprietary tool
they were paying for was failing them. They were
getting unclear visual and audio transmission
and couldn't get the two -way communication to
work reliably. Wait, so the professional expensive
tool was the one that was glitchy. In their specific
network environment, yes. And because Jitsi is
open, they could likely go in and tweak the transmission
settings to work with their specific bandwidth
constraints, something you just cannot do with
a locked down commercial app. That is such an
important point. It wasn't just a cheap knockoff.
It was a functional upgrade for them. It was
a better solution. So I'm listening to all this
and I'm sold. You save money. You own your data.
You can customize the code to make it work better
than the expensive stuff. It sounds like every
rural school in the country should be running
an all open source stack. It does sound that
way, doesn't it? It seems like the perfect solution
for these budget strap districts. I feel a butt
coming. But here's the plot twist. Ackerman's
analysis highlights this massive contradiction.
Despite all the clear cost benefits, rural schools
are actually less likely to use open source software
than suburban or urban schools. Hold on. That
doesn't make any sense. If I'm broke, I buy the
generic brand. Why are the schools with the least
money avoiding the free software? It brings us
right back to the free lunch concept. The software
is free. The license is free. But there's a hidden
cost. And it's a cost that is absolutely crippling
for rural areas. What is it? Expertise. Ah, human
element. You see, installing an enterprise -level
LMS like Moodle. It's not like downloading Candy
Crush. You don't just tap install and walk away.
Right. You need to configure a server. You need
to manage a database. You need to secure the
network ports. You need a chef. A chef. To go
back to that analogy, you have all the ingredients.
But you need someone who knows how to cook. And
in the tech world, that chef is a skilled systems
administrator. And I'm guessing those people
are pretty hard to find in a town of 800 people.
It is incredibly difficult. Rural districts really
struggle to recruit and retain high -level technical
talent. If you're a wizard at configuring Linux
servers, you can probably make six figures working
remotely for a tech giant. Or you move to the
city. It's hard to convince that person to work
for a rural school district salary. So the real
barrier isn't the cost of the software. It's
the cost of the human you need to run it. Exactly.
And this leads to what the source calls the risk
of abandonment. That sounds ominous. It is. It's
the bus factor. The bus factor. It's a morbid
old project management term. How many people
on your team can get hit by a bus before the
entire project fails? And in many of these schools,
the bus factor is one. It's one. There's one
IT person. The one person who knows how it all
works. Right. They set up a server, they customize
the code, they know where all the digital bodies
are buried. And if that person takes a new job?
or wins the lottery. The school is left with
a highly customized complex system that nobody
else knows how to use. If it breaks, there is
no 1 -800 number you can call. There's no customer
success manager. You are completely on your own.
That's a huge gamble for a superintendent to
take. Hey, let's bet the entire school year on
Dave not quitting. Right. And that fear, it drives
them right back to proprietary software. Because
even if it's expensive, even if it has limited
features, even if they hold your data hostage,
At least there's a support line. It feels safer.
That's tragic in a way. The very thing that could
level the playing field, this open technology,
is inaccessible because of a lack of human capital.
It's the rural paradox in a nutshell. So are
we stuck? I mean, is this just a dead end? Or
does Ackerman offer a way out of this trap? There
is a path forward, but it requires a real change
in mindset. The source says successful deployment
has to be a collaborative and iterative process.
Collaborative and iterative. Okay, are those
just buzzwords or is there a real substance there?
No, real substance. It means you can't just hire
a Dave and lock him in the server room. The deployment
of the software has to be a conversation, a real
back and forth between the technical experts
and the educators who actually use it. So the
teachers need to be involved in how the software
is built and changed. Yes. Because remember,
with open source, you can change the tool. If
a teacher says, you know what, this button is
in the wrong place, the IT team can actually
move the button. Wow. And Ackerman notes that
when this happens, educators become more sophisticated
users of technology. Because they understand
the why. They're not just passive users clicking
buttons. They are helping design the cockpit.
Exactly. And this brings us full circle, right
back to that community cookbook analogy we teased
at the start. I think now it'll make total sense.
OK, let's break it down. OK. So imagine a community
cookbook. First, you've got the ingredients.
The software. Right, the open source software
itself. It's commodity stuff. Flour, sugar, code.
It's free. Got it. Then you have the recipes.
That's the source code. Because of transparency,
you can read the recipe. You know exactly what's
in the dish. And because of freedom, you can
tweak the recipe. You can say, add more salt,
remove the nuts. But, and here's the rural paradox
part, just giving someone a sack of flour and
a recipe card doesn't guarantee a good dinner.
No. You need the chef. You need that technical
expert who has the skill and the time to gather
the ingredients, follow the recipe, and adapt
it to the local taste. And if you don't have
the chef, the free ingredients are pretty much
useless. Worse than useless. They just make a
mess. But here's the beautiful part of the community
aspect. In a true open source model, you aren't
just cooking alone in your kitchen. You're sharing
recipes with the next town over. So if one rural
district figures out a great way to configure
Moodle for bad internet. They can share that
recipe with another district. Exactly. They can
share the code. They can share the knowledge.
That is how you overcome the expertise gap by
pooling resources, not just hoarding them. It
shifts the entire focus from buying a product
to building a community. It really, really does.
Wow. This has been such an eye -opener. I mean,
we started by talking about free software, but
we ended up talking about labor economics and
community building. It is never just about the
code. So let's wrap this up with the key takeaways
for you listening at home. Sure. I'd say first,
open source is powerful. It offers that transparency
to see the code and the freedom to change the
code. You can solve problems that proprietary
software just can't. But takeaway number two,
free is... Very. Free comes with a high implementation
cost. You need expertise. And for rural areas,
that scarcity of human talent creates a massive
barrier. The bus factor is real. Which leads
to the final point. It's not about the tool,
it's about the people. The chef is just as important
as the ingredients. Maybe more so. You know,
this leaves me with a really heavy thought to
end on. We talk so much in education about the
digital divide the equity gap and usually we
mean Who has a laptop or who has high -speed
internet right the hardware gap? But listening
to this I'm wondering if the real gap of the
future isn't about hardware at all I mean if
the most powerful most flexible tools require
high -level human expertise to run Are we moving
toward a world where the rich districts are the
ones who can afford the freedom of open source
while the poor districts are stuck renting rigid
proprietary software just because it's safer?
That is a profound question. Are we moving from
a divide of digital capital to a divide of human
capital? If you can't afford the chef, you can't
use the cookbook. That's something I'm going
to be chewing on for a while. It's not about
buying the program anymore. It's about hiring
the human. Absolutely. Well, on that cheerful
note, we want to thank you for joining us on
this deep dive. It has been a real pleasure.
We hope next time you open an app or log into
a piece of software, you'll take a second and
just wonder, who holds the recipe? And do I have
the ingredients to change it? Or at the very
least, do I know a good chef? Exactly. Thanks
for listening. Take care.