An ethical question regarding school policy on software

[aneeshm]

First , the background .

I am a CS student at my school , and out lab has standardised on Windows 2000 server with Windows 98 as clients . All the machines are P4s , with 128 MB ram , except the server , which is a P4 with 256 MB RAM .

Now , the syllabus for CS is C++ programming . We use the Turbo C++ compiler/IDE . The problem is , it is not standards compliant ( at least with the latest standard ) . And it is also a proprietary product ( not that that is a problem , just an inconvenience ) .

Now , the problem is with standards . Had the lab and the textbooks used standards compliant code , then the code would have worked on all compilers and platforms . If the code ( and proprietary compiler ) is standards compliant , the student who has a computer at home has three choices -

a) Buy the product used at school
b) Use a free alternative to the product used at school ( GCC , MINGW , Dev-Cpp , etc. )
c) Pirate the product used at school

If , then , a student cannot afford a copy of Turbo C++ , they can just go for a free alternative .

If , however , the code is not standards compliant , then the student has the second choice eliminated . He can only either buy the product , or pirate . If the student cannot afford such a product , he MUST pirate it .

There is another option , but that is not practicable for any except the people like me , who are fanatically interested in CS . It is to learn the new standard the hard way ( using the Internet , and figuring out terse and incomprehensible compiler error output ) , and use different code at school and home - as I said , not practical for anyone except the hardcore geeks .

Very few people have chosen to do as I do - instead , they have all pirated Turbo C++ . Now this is a loss for everyone . When they have to do actual coding in college/university , they will have to re-learn trivial details ( usually the toughest thing to re-learn is the small habit , the little quirk , etc) , which is a great disadvantage . Not only that , but it is not programming in general that is taught - it is programming in a certain language . I have gone to the trouble of checking the syntax of some other languages , just to make sure that my conceptual knowledge is sound ( and that I am capable of updating it whenever necessary ) . So if it happens that the syntax of that language is taught incorrectly , then you are in the position of someone who knows only one language , does not know it properly , and cannot update himself .

The school also loses ( in terms of value , not money - the monetary cost should have the same or lower for another compiler ) - they have to pay for licenses to software that is useless ( or worse than useless ) to students .

Now my question is - is it ethical for the school to force the students to make such a choice - "go with vendor X , and if you can't afford that ( or don't want to waste money on an obsolete product , as nobody at my school will have a problem with buying it in terms of money , just that it is not available in India , and the version the school uses is obsolete ) , do something illegal , or learn the latest version yourself" ? Is the choice ethical in itself ?

I know it is perfectly legal , and I support the right of the school to do as they please , but is this way of behaving morally correct ?

[Locutus]

Well, you pay for your schoolbooks, don't you? I expect you won't use most of those after you graduate anymore either (especially if they're not standards compliant). I see paying for software I need for my study as no different from paying for books I need for my study, they're both necessary expenses which are simply required to be able to study (well). So no, it's not unethical of the school at all, it's unethical of the students that they pirate software (just as unethical as robbing the bookstore to get their studybooks).

Now, if it's smart (or even considerate, if the school knows there are free alternatives as well) to work with non-standards compliant and fast-obsoleting course material is a different matter entirely...

[aneeshm]

I don't use pirated stuff - like I said , I use GCC ( just bootstrapped and installed 4.0.0 on Fedora Core yesterday ) , and MINGW / Dev-Cpp on Windows . I have to port the code to the school's older version by hand , but I consider it worth the trouble - at least I know my code will work anywhere with a standard compliant compliler .

And yes , consider the "is it smart" part added to original question .

[LDiCesare]

It's not unethical. If someone managed to buy a computer, I can't see how they can't manage to buy one piece of software to go with it, which is not extraordinarily expensive either.
But, indeed, it's quite silly to teach people propritetary variants of the language. Teaching GCC would be smarter. Or in fact the Microsoft variant, as I believe it has more users than TurboC++, though the price is probably too big for a school to require people to use it.
As for being standards compliant, I believe that standards are not really the most important differences between say gcc and turboC++. Graphics libraries and other libraries (collections for instance) are. (I know collections and STL are standardised, but that doesn't mean it's used everywhere).

[Pekka]

Shouldn't be a problem, really. For learning purposes, Dev-CPP should be enough, and it has all you need for starters, and prolly further on.

For Java, well, no problem exists. Unless you want to have a superduper environment with bling bling editors, which should be avoided at all costs anyway.