Sacrifices made for Free Software

[Nicholas Johnson]

Hello everyone!

This is my first post here on the libreplanet-discuss mailing list. I
want to share my free software story so that hopefully others will find
inspiration in it. I studied for 2 years at SIUe before dropping out
because it became impossible for me to continue and keep my freedom.

It was a long journey. There were a series of events that forced me to
adapt and even contact professors and try to get students to adapt to
using free software. Up until the corona virus lock down in my state, I
had mostly found ways around using proprietary software and negotiating
with professors to allow me to use only free software in their class.
That all came to an end during the corona virus lock down where they
forced everyone onto Zoom and LockDown Browser spyware. They wanted me
to install Windows and use Lockdown Browser and wanted students to
activate their cameras to ensure cheating wasn't occurring. How invasive
is that, right? I said no and that I needed an alternative and they were
unwilling to give me one. I encouraged other students to complain about
the camera policy since that was invasive enough to bother more students
than just me. I was trying to work around freedom issues in multiple
classes while keeping up with course work and saw these kinds of issues
were going to continue, so I dropped out. I won't be able to go back and
get my degree most likely since there is no plan to fix the freedom issues.

If you want to read more of my journey, you can go to my blog at:
https://0gitnick.voidnet.tech/tags/testimony/

I still have quite a lot to write about and what I have on there so far
doesn't cover all my experiences at SIUe yet. If anyone has interest in
having their own free software story promoted on my blog, send me an email.

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