Decaying Free Software Communities vs. Emerging Hackerspaces

Young rebels with a noble cause

To promote free software, an unknown public good, in the region were piracy reigned and Microsoft, Adobe, Corel, were reguriting people by the dosens.

Group of hackers in our late teens and early twenties, defending a righteous cause in Macedonia, to promote free software

People were starting companies based on "free" pirated Microsoft software.
A new economy was being born in republics of the former yugoslavia.
We felt that investing in the proprietary software model was a tricky proposal, and we wanted our voice to be heard that we knew about something better.
Someting new, something radical

To promote free software in our society, our misson is:

Explore the technical and technological aspects
social and economical effects of free software on our society.

We established a grass roots ngowith a mission to:
We had a website, we had mailing list(s), an rss agregator, we setup the infrastructure both technical, organisational and legal.
A community was being born, from people who shared the idea that free software was "The right thing to do."
Shared a set of common values, about sharing, helping, about openness.

We admired the "hacker ethics" at MIT, RMS and the rest

Sharing
Openness
Decentralization
Community and colaboration

We wanted to show ordinary people and users the benefits of freesoftware. And whait is the greatest benefit of them all to someone who doesn't understand software nor english. Well localization. You can translate it into your own language and you can use them in your own language. Hell the goverment had to pay microsoft 4 milion euros for that. We did it 2 years before, to show that it can be done, and to teach the people the benefit of free software.

We localized the complete desktop stack in Macedonian, OpenOffice, Mozilla, KDE, GNOME, etc.

We fought the goverment before they signed the agreement with microsoft

We published letters, we got support from John Hall at Linux International

When they ignorred us and signed the agreement we organized the "Free software flood", on the Microsoft Vizija conference in Skopje, were we handout GNU/Linux CDs to participantsin front of the conference venue.

When they signed we hacked them on their own playing field,
Saying It is already legal
There were not many of us, but we were determined and we were smart :)

We promoted free culture works and creative commons, we promoted jamendo, magnatune, free movies and free cultural works

No matter where we applied, we got a big “No”. The usual donors, were not interested in us.

Nevertheless, the organizations was rarely without any money to fund some of its activities. This was mostly due to our participation on other projects (such as UNDP led ones), where some of the members got honorarium for their work, which they later donated for the general activities of the organization.

Who or what is Free Software Macedonia, and what do we do? We never were under any "umbrella". For bad or for worse.

Sometimes the ignorance goes even further. On one predominantly free software project led by a foreign agency, we were asked how can we possibly help with their project. Of course the obvious overlap of the name of the organization and the free software project was not enough to make the connection that it could be useful if FSM got involved. They actually screwed up localization, we warned and they did not listen. Now nobody cares about localization any more.

New people rarely join and many of the activists have just moved on.

This is especially interesting because the usage of GNU/Linux and free software in general has grown. The users however don't seem to bother with any of the issues surrounding the community.

* We took the risk and in 2009, in early september, I made a call for participation and people pledged money for rent we were going to fund a hacklab. * Finally.

3 Years, 2 locations and we are just getting started ...

In an half empty, half ruined, building from 1949 in the former premises of the geological institute we found refuge. Together with a group of artist we shared rent, it was maybe like Berlin in the 1990s, a semi like squat, a fully run community space. It was a place outside Skopje Macedonia, inside the city centre. An island of freedom and autonomy.

The hacker ethics were

Sharing
Openness
Decentralization
Community and colaboration

It seems that these are the actual values that we from the free software community shared, so all of a sudden we felt like we knew what we were doing. We were there once before, in the past, when we build our free software community. Now we had to be a little bit broader, to attract people intrested in technology and to promote the hacker etics.

KIKA 1.0 had to close after 1.5 years in late 2011

The artists made a 1000 eur bill for electricity, that didn';t stop us, we build a paralel power grid ,but then the building got condemned and gov institutions will be build on the premises

And yet it was still a success!

People for paying rent and membership fees, we were independant It proved it could be done The community started growing again

We actually rebuild the computer section of the popular Narodna Tehnika in former yugoslavia. Right at the moment when the actual Nardona Tehnika building, and infrastructure got sold and a university for toursim and business evicted the previous space.

Attract other communities

Wikipedia, other programming user groups, Drupal. wordpress it seems that there is interset but we don't know how to handle it at this moment

Getting new people involved steadilly over time

Then next generation, should replace the next, and the next, gsoc seem like a goot alternative where new generation of students come and go

International cooperation with CCC helped

The CCC congress is a must, to get experience and to just see how things are done on a whole new level

You are all invited to colaborate with us!

info@slobodensoftver.org.mk

blog.spodeli.org

But lets see what the future holds for everyone. There are many ideas and visions of what KIKA should be, and how it should look like but let's leave that for the future.