Re:Give Students User Freedom
by dooglius on Wednesday February 03, 2021 @11:18AM
(#26015100)
This focuses on the proprietary software aspect (unsurprisingly as it's the FSF), but more concerning to me is the fact that this makes students beholden to account deletion or censorship by these companies. Write an anti-Google essay, and you might lose access to everything!
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That's the real issue. Going to school might be required by law, but there should not be a requirement to enter a contract with an arbitrary company in order to successfully participate in the school.
If such a contract is required, it should be between the school and the vendor only, not imposing additional conditions on the student. Including accessibility or the need to have a particular third-party operating system with its own EULA.
After all, the student doesn't need to enter a contract with the caterng company to eat a school lunch.
That's where ideology comes in useful: if the school cannot provide that, it should be forced to create such a system. Given how many schools are there, the resource investment per school should not be that big.