On the contrary I think it is arrogant to expect students especially to be
*required* to use proprietary software.
As a teacher, it is really important that learning tools are *accessible* and
that means free and trustworthy.
For example MatLab/Mathematica can easily be replaced by SageMath. This
alleviates the need to force students to spend money on abusive software.
Similarly it is really important that we have an alternative to "Zoom" or
"Skype" that doesn't require students to sign up for something or even
necessarily download a software at all (Jitsi for example). Zoom which my
university is using right now limits video conferences of more than 3
students to 40 minutes or less unless you pay them.
I don't understand why people go to great lengths to respect moral concerns
about religion, eating meat, etc but concerns, moral or otherwise, about
software freedom are not taken seriously.
Also no one is demanding anything necessarily. Nonetheless as a professor or
TA running workshops, yes, it makes a lot of sense for me to demand that the
whole group use one platform. I would not use the word demand, but the whole
group absolutely needs to be using the same platform in order for us to meet
online, obviously. In light of that we should choose the most accessible
option possible.
Also what do you even mean by "the unity is never recovered"? Unity is needed
on a case by case basis.
