Ask HN: Why does Germany have such a strong meshnet community?

7 pointsneilalexander3 comments

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?

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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.

Yes, I suppose having an active community like CCC plays a huge role. I figure it is easy to find CCC-esque people who are willing to help.

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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