When I try to view the link, it says “Too Many Requests,” so I’m commenting in hopes that I can check it out later. Thanks for posting! I’m looking forward to reading it.

Enslavement software has more powerful imagery to it.

Here’s the 2021 archive.org backup of it, if it goes down again:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210422014523/https://www.gnu.org/education/how-i-fought-to-graduate-without-using-non-free-software.html

I commend this guy for sticking by his principles. I remember feeling shocked and let down when walking into my uni’s computer department for the first time and finding out that the main lab was the Windows lab, with the Linux lab being smaller and hidden away.

He must have tried the patience of his professors though, with his refusal to even use non-free JavaScript - for instance he wouldn’t use the Zoom video conferencing web client. Given that you don’t have to install anything on your machine and JS is heavily sandboxed, that does seem a bit too idealistic!

But hopefully he made his professors think a little and maybe they’ll even opt for true FOSS solutions in future. Like this Jitsi Meet that I’d never heard of before - I’m looking forward to trying it instead of Google Meet next chance I get.