GNU-Friends: Brett Smith Writes Open Letter about Free Software

[ Thanks to
matthew for this link. ]

“I am a student learning computer science at the University of
Kentucky. One of the courses required for this major requires that
I use proprietary software. I am ethically opposed to the use of
such software. All semester (until now), I have cordially and
non-confrontationally asked that these beliefs be respected. I have
been ignored. My grade has begun to suffer as a result. I am
writing now to bring my case to the attention of my entire computer
science department. Others, like the award-winning computer
scientist, Richard Stallman, have explained at length why one
should take an ethical stance for software freedom; I will not
restate such arguments here. I do, however, encourage readers who
are not familiar with these arguments to read The GNU Project’s and
the Free Software Foundation’s philosophy page (at
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/).

“As I have made my case privately to various faculty in my
department, several challenges have been offered to suggest why I
cannot reasonably expect to go through required major courses
without using proprietary software…”

Complete
Story