alt Hacker News> unite them without raising a new (local) software-dictator
If you're afraid that one country might create a better software product/company and win the market and this would become 'unfair,' you've already lost the plot.
Instead of harnessing the best talent the EU has to offer, you're making sure they never get off the ground in the name of 'fairness.' Tall poppy syndrome in the extreme.
I'm sorry but the free market-denial that's become endemic among European central planners is getting wildly irrational at this point. Every year we creep closer to USSR-level government spending as % of GDP, crowding out private sector activity.
Do you understand that the entire tax base of the EU is dependent on private sector businesses competing with each other to offer better products and services? Unfairness and exceptionalism and its winners are what funds our entire way of life.
We can redistribute some of the earnings from the winners to the losers after the fact (as we already do at 50% on average). But we absolutely need to have the market competition to drive value in the first place for there to be anything to redistribute!
That's an interesstingly delusional take, considering Open Source would support the free market in this specific case.
> If you're afraid that one country might create a better software product/company and win the market and this would become 'unfair,' you've already lost the plot.
That's not how this market works. With government, many projects do not make the deal because they have the better offer or superiour product, but because the company is better at playing the administration, which usually comes down to "investing more money". Open Source and open standards can remove some of the leverages they use, enabling smaller companies to play on a bigger field, and thus improving the market overall.
And with the actual political situation in Europe, there is also the beneficial sideeffect that more players in the market, and less dependecy from single point of failures, will allow everyone to raise their survival-rate in case of hostile actions.