The problem can be witnessed every time just about anyone seriously considers moving away from American products in the software space. They will notice that generally
Americans have done everything better than anyone else
Americans have done everything cheaper than anyone else
Which means that a significant change to EU-made stuff means that you will pay more for something that is worse. It takes a lot of commitment to some pretty much non-existant EU ideal to do that. And before Trump (especially the second term), nobody in EU really had any good reason to do it. USA was genuinely a good ally in just about every level.
There’s FOSS versions of most things, which are often quite good, sometimes better than commercial product, and almost always cheaper. For example: even 15 years ago when windows had a usable consumer OS and Linux was rougher, it was a better enterprise OS if you didn’t need AutoCAD or Photoshop.
Also, why not pirate? I know that doesn’t work for everything, but it works for some things.
Yeah I thought about Linux as a possible counter-example, then I realized that a significant amount of the maintenance burden of Linux as an operating system has been carried by American companies.
FOSS in general too, but a lot of that has also been done by american individuals either by themselves or backed by their employers.
And of course Linus Torvalds moved from Finland to America of all the places he could’ve chosen.
The problem can be witnessed every time just about anyone seriously considers moving away from American products in the software space. They will notice that generally
Americans have done everything better than anyone else
Americans have done everything cheaper than anyone else
Which means that a significant change to EU-made stuff means that you will pay more for something that is worse. It takes a lot of commitment to some pretty much non-existant EU ideal to do that. And before Trump (especially the second term), nobody in EU really had any good reason to do it. USA was genuinely a good ally in just about every level.
There’s FOSS versions of most things, which are often quite good, sometimes better than commercial product, and almost always cheaper. For example: even 15 years ago when windows had a usable consumer OS and Linux was rougher, it was a better enterprise OS if you didn’t need AutoCAD or Photoshop.
Also, why not pirate? I know that doesn’t work for everything, but it works for some things.
This is valid but the advice doesn’t scale.
Enterprises have very complex needs, and they generally aren’t going to pirate anything.
They paid for WinZip?
I’ve met some pretty shady sysadmins in my day.
Yeah I thought about Linux as a possible counter-example, then I realized that a significant amount of the maintenance burden of Linux as an operating system has been carried by American companies.
FOSS in general too, but a lot of that has also been done by american individuals either by themselves or backed by their employers.
And of course Linus Torvalds moved from Finland to America of all the places he could’ve chosen.
There are Americans who contribute, but they don’t own the product; nobody does.