I am probably the only person who ever replied like this to such assignments.
It’s just that, in my opinion, an instructor who asks his/her students to use a particular software is compelled to provide for them a copy of the software or at least a source where they can get a copy. Furthermore, being in education, the copy should be legitimate or else risk being a bad influence to his/her constituents.
Piracy is not an alternative and I do not want to be an educated pirate.
How can we, as academics, condemn plagiarism and not piracy? In essence, they are the same — making use of a legal intellectual property without credit — only that in software, credit is in the form of currency.
Seriously, if I don’t get an alternative or a legitimate copy, I will not do the Machine Problem.
Feel free to comment. 
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Edgar Ilaga, Rystraum. Rystraum said: : Education and Piracy http://rystraum.com/blog/2009/12/education-and-piracy/ [...]
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3 Dec 09 at 8:57 am
I can never agree more. Unless these UP kids are as rich as a “normal” politician… Anyway, point is, teachers shouldn’t always assume that their students have jobs or wealthy families…
Jofell Gallardo
3 Dec 09 at 8:59 am
@Jofell Gallardo
I’m assuming here that her assumption is that students will just “get creative” in getting the software. And MAPLE files comes with a very interesting extension: .MS
rystraum
3 Dec 09 at 9:02 am
i’m from the same class and i’m really surprised with your reply to her email. it was an eye opener for me. i just hope she gives us a legitimate copy of the software.
marielle
3 Dec 09 at 9:13 am
@marielle
Well, I’m not asking people to do the same as I will. I just don’t want to be a hypocrite, that’s all.
rystraum
3 Dec 09 at 9:20 am
I teach and do a lot of computational work. My adviser’s position is that “[t]he only constraint regarding choice of programming language is that it must be freely available or site-licensed to the Institute.” Not surprisingly, all students used python. CSRC does have some site-licensed software but it seems that (luckily) not everyone knows that. I also have a similar position but I would try to convince the student to see the light if the software used is licensed non-FOSS.
Anyway, maple is a computer algebra system so alternatives include variants of maxima. You may also use python’s sympy module.
ianalis
3 Dec 09 at 9:37 am
This seems to be a sad state of things, but we can also put it this way. Being a student of the UPFI program, most of our projects in certain courses require equipment that we need to rent out simply because the department does not have the proper equipment we need (like a 35mm. camera required for cinematography class).
Though this depends on the professor, the requirements are also mentioned at the beginning of the class, therefore we have this “you have been warned” thing.
Maybe when your professor said “please refer to the syllabus”, it was stated that Maple is a required program for the course.
You can either invest on Maple, or you can drop the subject and choose another professsor.
Problem is, if all professors of that course require using Maple, that may be a problem when the department does not have the necessary equipment (in this case, licenses) for it.
But then it goes back to my first argument…
techiefilmmaker
3 Dec 09 at 6:26 pm
Ohh yes piracy! I still wonder to this day why people loathe plagiarism and not piracy. I forgot to say this, you don’t have to be an educated pirate to do the machine problem. I’m from the same class. I know someone who did the MP’s without Maple you might know him ’cause he’s not your average student in the department. As a matter of fact he’s neither average nor a student, he’s a genius.
Aldous
4 Dec 09 at 4:40 am
@Aldous
The educated pirate part was not in the context of this particular case. I shifted from a particular to a general sense, such that, if this trend (educators forcing their students to pirate) keeps up, in all fields and in all endeavors, we are bound to end up as such.
And yes, I know him and I agree.
rystraum
4 Dec 09 at 4:47 am
go rys. ^_^ maybe we could ask that certain ‘genius’ in our department how he solved it without using the Maple software.
roy
4 Dec 09 at 6:12 pm
Back in high school, we were given legit copies of the applications we needed. The school paid lots of money for those serial keys though.
Now, from what I understand of the discussion so far, it seems to be very difficult, “practically impossible” to solve whatever assignment you were doing.
So what did you end up doing? Did you get free copies?
Eirik Fleisje
13 Jan 10 at 5:44 pm