Pantherina (he)Jan 25

The BuyFromEU movement needs to be careful to not become protectionist

https://feddit.org/post/24848421

The BuyFromEU movement needs to be careful to not become protectionist - feddit.org

While “buy from EU” sounds reasonable (and it is, in terms of physical goods that shouldnt rely on huge travels around the world), it is dangerously intertwined with protectionism. Politicians really like the idea of protectionism, but it doesnt help in terms of software, which is a big topic in here. Open Source / Free Software is always global, doesnt discriminate against contributors from any country (may it be sanctioned or not). I know a lot of really shitty proprietary software from the EU that I would always trade for free software from a global community.

Show threadFortyTwo

It depends on what your goal is. I used to share your opinion, but find myself increasingly of the opinion that these ideals must be kept separate. Much as I like the idea of open source, not all open source applications or crowd-sourced data can keep up with companies with hundreds or thousands of people actually responsible for it. Similarly, when it comes to innovation, large resources and private investments are needed. If we focus too much on requiring every single thing related to software being open source, we risk the entire effort failing before taking off.

Open source is great, and if you care especially much about this topic that’s also great, but it’s still quite niche (the general public won’t care), while geopolitical sovereignty is a big topic many are rapidly coming to appreciate. Let’s start with this part where there’s already substantial agreement within the population instead of necessarily packaging them together. Switching over from sending our money to the US for the privilege of dependence to investing our money into our own companies seems a relatively easy and well supported first step, over European and open source and non-addictive and no obnoxious ads and low energy consumption and and and. All all worthwhile causes, but insisting on all at once is doomed to fail. IMO it’s better to move in steps, and start with the low-hanging fruit.

Jan 26 at 10:48amWeb
Show threadduilleogFeb 3

For a long-term open source user, this thought seems backward. While I agree that the two axes are separate, don’t then tie innovation to corporate interests where it doesn’t belong.

Open source has driven and continues to drive innovation, in all fields not just those with low capital barriers to entry. Name any category and the innovation leaders are generally open source to some degree although also often commercial. This holds true even for Apple, Meta, Nvidia, Google and especially so for ‘plumbing’. On the other hand Linux, Git, Postgres, Node dispel the requirement of needing corporate owners. At the cutting edge I would hazard that academia plays a larger role than corporate interest.

It’s only when a product category becomes monopolisable that corporate investment becomes attractive. By that stage much of the groundwork is already complete. For some categories, monopolisation never materialises, or as you say, the general public doesn’t care. This doesn’t mean products don’t exist, merely that marketing doesn’t have sufficient budget to reach an incurious public.

The core issue is why we want to invest money domestically. If it’s strictly to punish others by recreating the same or similar exploitative structures for products that are already free, that doesn’t make much sense. If it’s to protect sovereignty, fair enough but we can simultaneously strike better tradeoffs between freedom and features as we go, harming nobody.