Well I did, but the community in Lemmy is suffocatingly left leaning for me. So I had to go back to Reddit for fresh air. (Never have I thought I’d go back to Reddit because some other community is even more left, but here we are.)

Judging by the number of downvotes my question received, looks like most people here prefer censorship over expressing ideas.

What exactly is wrong with free speech?

This is a case where the class is led by a moron. That person should be reported.

Piracy for the students was justified because they had no other option. But outside of this school, if I were you and I needed the software again, I’d definitely use Octave without question. (Or Python if I’m willing to learn something new.)

The point is, if you have free and open source alternatives, use them. You’ll be better off.

Are you sure the distances are not swapped?

I certainly wouldn’t think possibly badly written and indexed docs without crowd sourced helpfulness indicator where you may or may not find your answer is 1/4 miles, while a concise highly upvoted answer in stack overflow is 21 miles.