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Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

I find it endlessly fascinating how governments always get lost in the symptoms of the problems at hand instead of addressing the underlying problem itself.

The EU has no viable software industry because there's no real single market to fundraise from and sell into (no single capital market, no single language market, no single regulatory market, etc).

The lack of domestic EU software/hardware products sits entirely downstream of that issue. The open source community will not magically solve this problem for them.

What if we stopped wasting time on anything that is not solving the core issue. The symptoms will take care of themselves after you solve the disease.

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How is this not solving the core issue? You need to do both. Ensure the software is made (pay devs), and if you're funding this, make sure it is licensed as a public good (free, oss).

The problem with putting on band-aids over core structural issues is the government projects are going to run into the same fragmentation issues that private sector ones have. Open source is not a magic wand you can wave to fix that.

You only need to the solve the core issue. Unless you believe humans born on the European continent are inherently less intelligent or motivated than those born on American soil, then quite literally the problem will solve itself.

All humans are the same species and respond to the same incentives. Just create similar incentives here and stop trying to top-down solve all the symptoms with bandaids after the fact. It just doesn't work.

Name me one example of EU government created software that people have ever chosen to use voluntarily. Or heck, even one that people are forced to use but isn't downright terrible compared to a private alternative.

You said -

> The EU has no viable software industry because there's no real single market to fundraise from and sell into (no single capital market, no single language market, no single regulatory market…

Yes incentives matter. They are not the only factor when figuring out the outcome. Competitive structures, and the type of good being traded has a bearing as well.

Software is not like physical goods. Given the marginal costs of making additional units of software is effectively nil, and that network effects tend to lock users in, you will see the rise of behemoths that shrug off competition.

You see more competition when it comes to startups than a stalwart like Excel or word.

I can of course be wrong - but For major daily drivers type software (Gmail, word, etc.) , the incumbents aren’t going to be moved by simply increasing competition.

I think you are just decribing one factor that caused the problem. There is many a detailed analysis, the most respected being the one by Draghi.

Previously this also wasn't much of a problem. The US tech companies were international companies and less "US" companies. Now they aligned themselves with the US regime and are e.g. a supply chain vulnerability and properly taxing them causes issues in national defence (via Ukraine). I for one did not anticipate this own-goal w.r.t. Europe by the US.

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