Free technology, knowledge in motion

What we learn needs to meet what we build.

A community that turns ideas into projects, learns from what it creates and carries every discovery forward.

Education · Research · Engineering · Community

01 / THE IDEA

Knowledge that carries on.

The code we teach is not always the code we use to build. ITFree brings these worlds together through classes grounded in projects that have been tested and used in production: students learn the decisions and methods behind real software.

Industry can adopt these projects or build products on their foundations, working with the same knowledge that shaped the student's learning. New challenges return to research and the classroom, feeding the next generation of projects.

ITFree means free IT. Learn from what exists, test what is missing and let others carry on. Third-party tools can speed up the work without taking control of the shared method.

A teacher guides; a self-taught learner experiments; a researcher examines evidence; someone in industry puts solutions to the test. Everyone brings what they know and learns from what others discover.

02 / THE MAP

One platform.
Many pathways.

Different starting points. One shared place to learn, create and share.

01itfree.orgWhere journeys meet 02itfree.schoolLearning by building 03itfree.scienceResearch in the open 04itfree.devEngineering that carries on 05itfree.netConversations in context

03 / THE PILLARS

01.org

The public experience

Where the journeys come together.

A teacher brings a project to class. The code raises a research question; the answer changes the way they teach. .org brings these journeys together and keeps protocols and criteria visible to the community. It uses tools from independent projects, but neither makes nor resells them.

An initial cycle can bring together a class, an open project, public review and a reproducible artifact. Every essential activity retains a usable path without additional commercial modules.

Learn more about .org

02.school

Education in motion

Learn at the frontier of real-world work.

Students learn with the same code, tools and decisions they will encounter at work. Projects used in production enter the classroom; new challenges from practice return as questions, experiments and improvements. Each class learns from what has already been built and contributes to what comes next.

Those who want to do research find methods, records and other people to examine ideas with. Undergraduate final projects, master's degrees and doctorates are possibilities, not a ladder everyone must climb.

Learn more about .school

03.science

Science in the making

One study can open up new questions.

When an author decides to publish a preprint, the community can follow its progress, discuss hypotheses and propose new questions. Students learn from research in progress; researchers examine methods and results; professionals recognize challenges from their own practice.

Versions and reviews help others follow the work. Technical checks and community discussion do not grant automatic scientific endorsement; a later publication can be linked to the preprint with its source identified.

Learn more about .science

04.dev

Engineering open to scrutiny

From plan to artifact. From one artifact to the next.

Independent projects, showcase code and tools take ideas from intention to execution. Tests and automated checks reveal technical issues for human examination; they do not establish scientific merit.

A provider can automate the work. If the service stops, the free project retains its code, shareable data and instructions to carry on through another implementation or other means.

Learn more about .dev

05.net

A connected community

Ideas have a history. So do conversations.

A decision changes a project. Without the conversation that led to it, newcomers see the code but miss the reasoning behind the change. Questions and comments accompany projects and their versions; public discussions invite more people to contribute.

Classes and groups can talk in private rooms. Changes and removals retain context without making private conversations public or turning activity into surveillance or rankings of people.

Learn more about .net

WHAT CARRIES ON

The next project can begin where the last one left a question.

Code and protocols published for free use can remain with the community even when a service ends. Additional tools and services can be purchased when they make sense; public participation does not depend on that purchase.

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