The emails mention students only using FOSS. And while they are the minority, their point of view is reasonable. Studying should not involve handing over one’s data to MS or any other big tech corp without good reason.
When I was a student last, I was using an Ubuntu laptop, and an android phone that was no longer receiving updates, so couldn't run any of the new versions of the apps required to do so many things.
Nowadays I'm a sellout and traded liberty for convenience (and deserve neither, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin), but I used to fight the FOSS fight. My first two jobs were on Agpl/gplv3/gplv2 products!