Hampshire Can Save Money

This is admittedly a more shallow reason for using Free Software than others, but an important one nonetheless. Free Software allows schools, and indeed all users, to distribute and install copies to any computer as many times as necessary. It's important not to get caught up in this reason alone, because proprietary software vendors can distribute copies to schools for free in order to get them dependent and lock them in, only to gouge money from them later on for upgrades. Proprietary software vendors offering free as in beer (no cost, or gratis) copies of software to schools can be likened to tobacco companies distributing their products to children in order to get them addicted. With Free Software, both the inital deployment of the software as well as all future upgrades will not cost the school a cent.

Hampshire Should Teach and Promote Ways of Life that Benefit Society as a Whole

Free Software should be promoted and used by Hampshire in the same way recycling or sustainable energy sources are. Teaching Free Software to students allows us as members of society to escape being unecessarily dominated and repeatedly gouged by megacorporations in life post-graduation. As we become increasingly dependant on technology to perform essential tasks in our daily lives, it is unsustainable to depend on those who would so willingly strip us of our freedoms and control of our own computer, not when Free alternatives are so readily available and such high quality.

As an Education Institution, Hampshire Should Promote the Pursuit of Knowledge

Free Software permits users to study how software works. To learn to write software well and therefore tell our computer to do what we want, we must read and write source code, code from real programs that people actually use. Proprietary software inherently rejects a student's pursuit of knowledge by sending the message that learning is forbidden. Free Software encourages everyone to learn if they choose to do so, and the global Free Software community inherently rejects the concept of the “priesthood of technology”, which serves to keep the general public in ignorance of how technology works in order to maintain the status quo.

Hampshire Should Encourage All Community Members to be Good Neighbours and Citizens

At the most fundamental level, schools should teach students useful skills and basic facts for their lives ahead. But this base mission is not enough, especially for a unique institution such as Hampshire College with its motto of Satis Non Scire (or 'To Know is Not Enough'). Educational institutions in general, and indeed certainly Hampshire in specific, should encourage cooperation with others, especially those in need of help. By choosing proprietary software, Hampshire is currently presenting an awful dilemma to the members of our community: either refuse help to others who may be in need or break the law in doing the morally correct thing.