Re: Sacrifices made for Free Software

[LM]

Adonay Felipe Nogueira wrote:
> Another challenge that came to haunt me in 2018 (first bachelor's
> degree) and is surely going to be repeated in 2020 and 2021 is the fact
> that the teacher of the "final course work" class expects the student
> perself to use a non-free software to scan for plagiarism, this involves
> making an account to some service and using a Java (not JavaScript)
> program to scan the .PDF comparing each phrase with lots of other works
> in scientific repositories, in which case I resort to borrowing
> computers again.

Someone on the LibOER mailing list is asking about software to check
for plagiarism.  He's looking for an "interactive online discussion
platform".  He needs a system that "monitors and grades student online
discussions for an instructor" and "tracks down plagiarism and
monitors open ended discussion".  He gave a commercial example of
https://www.packback.co/

So, here's an opportunity to give a school an alternative to a
non-Free product and promote Free Software.  Is there a Free Software
solution that does the job?  If not, how do we expect schools to give
Free options or replace what they're using?  We have the opportunity
to replace a non-Free product with a Free one.  If anyone knows of any
Free alternatives for this or a project that would be willing to work
on one, please let me know and all pass the information on to the
LibOER mailing list.