With the likes of Freifunk dominating Germany, what factors led to its success, and how come other countries like the UK seemingly have absolutely zero interest in meshnets?
Funnily enough, the early early history of Freifunk afaik involved some initiative from London.
For why Freifunk is strong in Germany: I'd guess a) established, organized hacker community (e.g. Chaos Computer Club) spreading the idea and providing starting points for local groups, providing a critical mass of participants and b) very little in the way of commercial open WLANs for a long time.
From what I've heard, there's big community networks in Spain too.
I guess one factor is that Germans traditionally care deeply about privacy. This is in no small part due to our history of privacy violations, e.g. the state spying on its citizens during the Nazi years, but also in Eastern Germany during the country's partition. See the excellent film „The Lives of Others“ for an example of the latter.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 18.1 ms ] threadFor why Freifunk is strong in Germany: I'd guess a) established, organized hacker community (e.g. Chaos Computer Club) spreading the idea and providing starting points for local groups, providing a critical mass of participants and b) very little in the way of commercial open WLANs for a long time.
From what I've heard, there's big community networks in Spain too.