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To some extent I can agree, even though it's generalizing. My hacking friends in Finland approach the subjects you're polling on very differently than the hackers/makers in my area (Dallas-Fort Worth, TX). But then, my Finnish friends are not very different from those I'm familiar with in Boston, Northern California and other regions of the US. Kansas and Texas, in my experience, are generally more resistant to changing the status quo, to disruption, than those in the other areas I mentioned. But even then, I find it to be a consequence of corporate culture-- decades of working in cubes with a mandate to keep your eyeballs glued to your PC and a fear of sticking your neck out. Of course we should work to overcome that conditioning. My Finnish friends don't exhibit it at all. Very intelligent, very independent, very prone to questioning things.
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I've found in parts of Europe I've visited that, yes, there is generally more emphasis on FLOSS and related principles. Hell, Berlin runs their largest commercial airport on an open source air traffic control system. We're not ready for that here yet. On the other hand, the makers I know in this area develop on Arduinos and use Android phones. Some here are so hard core that they make a religion out of avoiding Microsoft products. So the situation isn't completely dire for FLOSS.
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Having said all that, I struggled with your poll. It's replete with questions couched in confirmation bias. I found myself faced with questions that required answers with caveats. "Hackerspaces are for using, creating and promoting Free/Libre Open Source Software" -- sure, but while I love Inkscape, nine times out of ten I'm going to get my work done with Adobe Illustrator and I'm not going to apologize for it. And don't get me started on Scribus vs InDesign.
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In principle we should be *encouraging* use of FLOSS, definitely. But I don't want to create an atmosphere where that's forced, and your poll seems to be on that path.
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Now excuse me, I have to set up some ThinkPads to run both Windows and Linux...
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Randall Arnold
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Tarrant Makers
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On April 6, 2014 at 9:26 AM Mike Dupont <jamesmikedupont@googlemail.com> wrote:
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Hello Fellow Hackers,
</div> I recently moved to Kansas and found hackerspaces that are not really what I would have expected from my experience with hackerspaces in Europe (cbase, matrax and others) . I find much less FLOSS and very little knowledge or awareness of any of the issues that I feel are important.
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<br />Of courseI don't want to dictate or tell people what to do, and I see hackerspaces and people as totally independent.
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<br />But what I would like to see is some guidelines or criteria for a FLOSS supporting hackerspace, something that is supported by many people. Ideally we can come up with a set of guiding principles that hackerspaces can freely adopt and identify with that will tell people that they support software freedom. If enough hackerspaces do this it would be attractive to new and budding hackerspaces as voluntary self identification.
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<br />So I made a short survey to get peoples opinion on this :
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<a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9WYC6SY">https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9WYC6SY</a>
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<br />Thanks to wannabe1987, gmc, Wil5on, Otter on irc for debugging this and providing constructive feedback
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Also I wanted to say that I am starting a free software association for Kansas
<a href="http://flosokaks.thefr33.com/">http://flosokaks.thefr33.com/</a> and looking for support.
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</div> thanks,
<br />mike
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Randall (Randy) Arnold
<br />Developer and Enthusiast Advocate
<br />http://texrat.net
<br />+18177396806
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