Re: Sacrifices made for Free Software

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

Em 06/06/2020 19:33, Nicholas Johnson escreveu:
> 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.

I also thought about that at first, but then reconsidered, while still
trying not to use non-free software.

Fortunately, the college I'm studying doesn't require remote attendance
through the use of Zoom, nor they require proctoring software during tests.

With that into account, I've tried countless times to try to contact, by
email, the organization responsible for the student information system
that the college I study on uses. Having failed that, I made sure that
all semester "satisfaction" quizzes were answered with a suggestion on
how to free/liberate the JavaScript that is forced on the users of the
college's web pages. Even made it clear that there is a Brazilian group
of activists that can be reached through a simple email to the
corresponding mailing list. All of that endured for at least 6 (six)
years, and counting.

Before 2019, I used to borrow other people or Internet cafe's computers
in order to quickly retrieve the course materials. From 2019 and beyond,
I set myself to try to consolidate both my bachelor's degree (not
related to computing), my search for a fixed work position and the
development of a free/libre WebExtensions browser add-on to replace the
non-free JavaScript being used in the student information system,
project which is still not published, but has basic support for the most
important functions.

To make the add-on, I exercise the exception "to use non-free software
to reverse engineer it and develop free/libre replacement for that same
software" (as is described in [1]), through observing the web browser's
"Network" tab (in Trisquel's Abrowser and GNU IceCat, this is in "Tools"
→ "Web development" → "Show/hide tools"), do the actions I expect to
replace, then export the resulting network log to .HAR (in the same tab,
click/tap the cog icon → "Save all as HAR"). From there on I can restart
browser (with GNU LibreJS on, just in case), import the .HAR file and
inspect all the requests and responses without the need for internet
connection.

As of today, what is challenging me is the fact that many teachers
upload stuff to Google Docs/Drive instead of using the college's student
information system, and I couldn't come up with a way to get the content
from Google. As for meetings through Google Meet, I tried once
participating using the PSTN/phone number and trunk code that is
advertised in the iCalendar/vCalendar invitation that is sent by email
and, although it works OK for audio-only, it is expensive for the
pre-paid cellphone plan I use due to the international call involved.
Besides, if the teacher uploads the recording of the conference to any
website supported by VLC or youtube-dl, I can make use of such means,
although not being a perfect solution (because most people will upload
to centralized video publishing platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo, and
I won't be fostering people to get out of that).

Another challenge that came to haunt me in 2018 (first bachelor's
degree) and is surely going to be repeated in 2020 and 2021 is the fact
that the teacher of the "final course work" class expects the student
perself to use a non-free software to scan for plagiarism, this involves
making an account to some service and using a Java (not JavaScript)
program to scan the .PDF comparing each phrase with lots of other works
in scientific repositories, in which case I resort to borrowing
computers again.

Overall, I hope the report of my current situation has helpd you all.


# References


[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-program.html .

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