esa

One rather obvious reason is that society has a lot of greybeards in general. The baby boomer generation was named that for a reason, and people have been living longer on average. Lots of countries are struggling with the demographic effects. There’s no reason to expect that tech or something even more specific like FOSS would be exempt.

Another aspect here is that FOSS is still kind of new in society. There’s just more people who have had the chance to age into FOSS greybeards than when those greybeards were young. (And they were thus likely to a lesser degree blocked by entrenched greybeards when they were getting started.)

Yeah, it’s essentially a weathervane or thermometer. You can indicate the state of a country by it.

At this point the US has joined the ranks of, well, grim theocracies. Not that the people at the top in the US worship anything but Mammon.