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+1<br>
<br>
Our space has a lot of open-source (and even some hardcore GNU)
supporters, and we've been doing Ubuntu events & workshops with
open-source software since we opened our doors. We've also had
members in the past ask to ban proprietary software from the space
entirely. We recognized that while each member has their own
principals, the space can't adhere to every one of them. In fact we
decided a long time ago that the space itself should not be
politically motivated or inclined one way or the other.<br>
<br>
The majority of our members are a pragmatic bunch -- go with what
works. Some equipment toolchains (like our laser cutter) are based
on closed-source software. Are there other options? Probably. But we
want to cut things with lasers, not work on the software for cutting
things with lasers, even if it makes us feel better about software
freedom. That said, if a member wants to spend the time to develop
an full open source replacement, by all means they're welcome to do
so.<br>
<br>
By in large, hackerspaces are full of people with strong principals.
Sometimes it's better to err on the side of inclusiveness instead of
attempting to polarize everyone one way or the other.<br>
<br>
Ben <br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 4/6/2014 12:58 PM, William
Macfarlane wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAN0yGCC1Pog=yUewW2JLdkbrrBZOHqWjnxB+OnvhTGU6QVvDww@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>I think that many European Hackerspaces (I won't say "most"
because, as a North American with a life that affords very
little travel time, I haven't visited very many) have an
explicitly political/activist self-definition, whereas many
American spaces don't (this comes up every year or so on list
n arguments about "Hackerspace" vs. "Makerspace".)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This is , for one, not to say that there aren't explicitly
political American spaces, but, more importantly, it's not to
say that American Hacker/Maker spaces are apolitical. I think
that there's a sense, even in the least explicitly political
American hackerspaces, that the thing we are doing is,
somehow, radical, even if this radicalism doesn't fall in any
kind of traditional activist framework. Just creating
public/semi-public community spaces is a huge achievement and
an implicitly radical one in America (radical in the sense of
being about individual/collective empowerment.)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'm usually the guy in my space who says "hey, let's use
the FLOSS solution for this task." A lot of times, people are
receptive, and where they aren't, it's usually because,
either, the FLOSS version of the tool is significantly worse
for the task at hand than the proprietary one, or because they
already know how to use the proprietary one, have access to
the proprietary one, and the workflow of the FLOSS version is
significantly different. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>"Make a brochure for the space" and "learn to use Scribus
to make a brochure for the space " (let alone "hack Scribus
into something I can use") are distinctly different tasks, and
while they both have value, the second one can feel like an
artificial barrier between you and getting the task done.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>It's also true that there is a vast space of
political/politicized ideals that you can focus on, and that
you probably can't do them all well simultaneously. I,
personally, have a sense that running a hackerspace and
keeping it going -- having an open community space for people
to learn about and use tech and tools -- is both a significant
achievement and a significant challenge. While, in an ideal
world, I would use FLOSS for everything, and hack it whenver
it didn't meet my goals precisely, this is more-or-less
equivalent to the ideal world in which I do all of our
plumbing and building maintenance and fix our truck disaster
of a pick-up truck when it breaks (which is all the time.)
Sometimes things need to be easy in order to get done, and
sometimes this means using proprietary software (and/or
letting people use proprietary software.)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>There's also an issue of welcomingness/accessibility. A
lot of people in the world have never thought about FLOSS
principles, proprietary software, etc etc. It's incredibly
uncomfortable to come into a space and find yourself told
(implicitly or explicitly) that you're bad because you're
Doing It Wrong in a context that's unfamiliar to you. This
can accidentally play into a lot of bad tech-elitism dynamics
(i.e. software people telling designer people that they are
Bad for using Adobe products, and not acknowledging the
knowledge/expertise that said design people have about what
makes a tool a good one for their field.)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Around piracy -- not making a case either direction
(because I think it's complicated), I will say that a lot of
people think that piracy is a perfectly reasonable and
legitimate form of action against proprietaryt software, big
copyright, etc etc. Maybe they're wrong, but they might not
think so.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I think that hackerspaces probably should run workshops
teaching FLOSS tools, where possible. I want people to leave
workshops more capable of accomplishing their goals, which
means I want them to have easy access to the tools that they
just learned how to use. The counterexample to this is where
a particular proprietary tool is the industry standard. I
think that teaching people the skills that they need to get
jobs is a legitimate goal for a hackerspace to have (because I
think that subverting traditional educational/credentialling
systems is super-important and worth doing.) Learning KiCad
might be really awesome for doing your own circuit board
design, but learning Eagle might be more helpful if you want
to get an engineering job. (or Blender vs. Maya, etc etc.) </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Since both of these things seem related to hackerspace
goals of democratizing education, tech access, etc etc,
running both sorts of classes seems legit.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>-Will</div>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.partsandcrafts.org">www.partsandcrafts.org</a></div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 12:27 PM,
Randall G. Arnold <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:randall.arnold@texrat.net" target="_blank">randall.arnold@texrat.net</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div> 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. </div>
<div> </div>
<div> 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. </div>
<div> </div>
<div> 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. </div>
<div> </div>
<div> 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. </div>
<div> </div>
<div> Now excuse me, I have to set up some ThinkPads to
run both Windows and Linux... </div>
<div> </div>
<div> Randall Arnold </div>
<div> Tarrant Makers </div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote
style="padding-left:10px;margin-left:0px;border-left-color:blue;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid"
type="cite">
<div class=""> On April 6, 2014 at 9:26 AM Mike Dupont
<<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:jamesmikedupont@googlemail.com"
target="_blank">jamesmikedupont@googlemail.com</a>>
wrote: <br>
<br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<div>
<div class="">
<div> 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. <br>
<br>
</div>
Of courseI don't want to dictate or tell people what
to do, and I see hackerspaces and people as totally
independent. <br>
<div class=""> <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. <br>
<br>
So I made a short survey to get peoples opinion on
this : <br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9WYC6SY"
target="_blank">https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9WYC6SY</a>
<br>
<br>
Thanks to wannabe1987, gmc, Wil5on, Otter on irc
for debugging this and providing constructive
feedback <br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div> Also I wanted to say that I am starting a free
software association for Kansas <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://flosokaks.thefr33.com/"
target="_blank">http://flosokaks.thefr33.com/</a>
and looking for support. <br>
<br>
</div>
thanks, <br>
mike <br clear="all">
<br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div> Randall (Randy) Arnold <br>
Developer and Enthusiast Advocate <br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://texrat.net"
target="_blank">http://texrat.net</a> <br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:%2B18177396806"
value="+18177396806" target="_blank">+18177396806</a>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
-Will<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.partsandcrafts.org">www.partsandcrafts.org</a>
</div>
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