Just for fun I posted a poll on the Nikon User Group on facebook.
It’s very large group (89 000 members!) of widely varied opinions. (being diplomatic 
)
It looks like this:
40 votes so far.
Any thoughts?
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My gut reaction is surprise(and a pleasant surprise!) that only 22% have indicated “Never heard of it” - it will be interesting to see any change in this after 24 hours and the European and North American demographics have all had the chance to participate.
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Yes, same here. 
Although, I’ve seen RawTherapee mentioned in the group fairly often when the question of free editing software comes up.
It seems the best known of the “Pixls software” in those circles. But I was by no means sure if the term open source was part of the vocabulary so as speak.
Looking forward to the longer term results. I’ll post here tomorrow to let you know!
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The poll is around 3 hrs in now…
I think the people who don’t care about ‘inferior hippy stuff’ don’t fill out the survey, while advocates do, so the measurement is skewed.
Reading comments that regularly pop up under FOSS news on dpreview suggests quite a few are actually hostile towards our tools.
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Many people regard their prowess with Adobe (or some other tool) an integral part to their identity. To these people, the idea that Open Source software could be good, is a threat, as it invalidates their investment. “If a free thing can do what I do, my skills are worthless”.
This is, of course, a fallacy. It is an error of category to equate the price of a piece of software with the worth of the user’s skill. But it is, I believe, at the root of the animosity towards FOSS in some circles.
It happens to us, too. Some FOSS enthusiasts disregard anything commercial as obviously frivolous and wasteful. Or even evil. This commits the same error, just in reverse.
We should therefore probably strive to separate discussions of skill from discussions of tools. At the end of the day, it matters more what we do with the tools than the make and model of tool. (And lest we forget that most commercial tools do rely on various pieces of FOSS internally, while most FOSS is run on machines with many a proprietary component. It’s a collaboration, not a war.)
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I don’t know… people are weird.
Incredible. What have they got to complain about?? Just don’t use it if they don’t like it. 
I find that hard to swallow, but:
I sometimes feel a little like that.
So I suppose I should accept the opposite point of view as well.
Thanks for your thoughts everyone. This whole thing was prompted by sheer curiosity stemming from when I mentioned open source in some context on Facebook a while back and got some rather puzzled responses. 
I’m just glad to be here.
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When I was in IT I heard it so many times, in so many variations, but the same message nonetheless: “That’s just free / shareware garbage. I wouldn’t trust it.” The amusing part was, sometimes it was said while they conducted online business via a website running on LAMP. 
In particular (back in the '90s, especially the later '90s) I heard that kind of FUD from Mac users. However, that might have been due to my immediate and larger context within the graphic design industry.
But as @bastibe pointed out, I’ve heard the opposite probably just about as many times: “It’s just proprietary junk. I can do the same thing with FOSS in only 47 steps.”
And I think we (all, free / non-free) can become a bit unaware of how much tribal knowledge we take for granted vs. what “users” have to try and figure out. I’m not saying all users even try to figure anything out (heavens, no) but they’re often on a different plane – Even today after 40+ years of desktop / personal computing.
I agree - Use what works, for you, for the task, at that moment, per your conscience. I in no way advocate being blind to the larger picture “behind” products, but that’s only one factor in my decision.
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Interesting.
In the first results, margin of error is +/- 13% at a confidence level of 95% …
… so “never heard of it” could be from 9% to 25% of the population.
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I’m fairly certain that all of the photo editing software has at least one FOSS component, probably more. None of those companies are writing their own tiff or jpeg libraries. FOSS is in everything now, whether you know it or not.
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We installed a new induction cooktop last year. In the package there was a GPL notice — apparently the microcontroller inside runs a GPL library, so they had to include one.
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Just a final update to round this thread off - voting has slowed down significantly as the post gets older and is seen by less people.
Could be better could be worse
I may have enlightened one or two people… you never know! I don’t think I’ll pursue the subject on that group anyway…
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It’s the dreaded 48/52 Brexit split between never heard of it or uninterested vs I use it at minimum sometimes
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This is a pattern that I find highly suspect. If a binary choice comes out close to 50%/50%, the voting is indistinguishable from random chance. Yet, we see this pattern in high-profile votes such as Brexit or US elections. How can major decisions such as these be governed by chance?
Strangely, this pattern only seems to happen in binary choices. Multi-party elections (e.g. Germany, France) don’t seem to produce stochastic results. Perhaps the need to cooperate between parties somehow changes the dynamics?
But for binary choices, it seems that humans are not very decisive animals, as a large enough group. (Personally, I’d vote to overturn any vote that doesn’t pass with at least some margin of significance. Random choice is not democracy.)
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I, er…, 100% agree.
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I’m 100% FOSS… because I’m 100% skint.
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“never heard of it” now at 42%, sample size 128 out of 89,000 gives margin of error +/- 8.65% (95% confidence level).
https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm
Even at 42-8.65=33.35%, the nays have it!
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