[serbuvlad]

Once again, the EU coming 30 years later to do something everyone else is doing, and everyone will credit them for some odd reason.

In the 90s, there were dozens (hundreds?) of phone charging ports. A couple of years ago, there were only two. The dozens -> 2 simplifications occurred on the purely free market. And the EU mandated a simplification from 2 -> 1 and gets the credit for the entire simplification.

What is the point of this license? Either the GPL is invalid in the EU, in which case why aren't companies moving to the EU to infringe on the GPL? Or it is valid, in which case a a bunch of EU lawyers were given a bunch of MY money to do nothing of value to anyone.

[xandrius]

Whenever something from the EU emerges on HN, whatever that is, a comment exactly like yours is made.

Today it's you, tomorrow someone else.

Always the same "points" and the poster always seems to feel obliged to bring their own misshapen view of history, forgetting that a lot of good changes in this so-called "free market" happened because of the EU.

Sure more tech became popular out of the US but let's not be blinded:

1. This tech isn't/wasn't the only innovative tech ever created

2. A lot of reasons for the popularity has to do with US position over the rest of the world

3. That this same tech has been kept at bay because of the US

I'm not saying the EU is perfect but I prefer its direction over the US, especially when it comes to making legislations which benefits the people rather than multinational corporations.

[serbuvlad]

I simply do not think that the popularity of US tech is due to anything other than the quality of US tech.

I live in Romania, and the people that were rushing to pirate Windows in the 90's after communism fell because they couldn't afford licensing weren't doing so because of any US imposition, but simply because they wanted to use personal computers, and Windows was the best OS for most people at the time for that purpose.

Just like when phones came around they rushed to buy Nokia phones; when smartphones came around they rushed to buy Samsung phones; when they wanted DLSRs they bought Canon and Nikon cameras and now that they want easily transferable digital cash and cheap tech trinkets they opened up Revolut accounts and order stuff off Temu.

Not because of any "influence" or "position" of Finland, South Korea, Japan, the UK or China, but simply because they are the best offer on the market as perceived by consumers.

What tech does Europe lead in? To be fair there are still some fields, like Aerospace (Airbus), Lithography (ASML) or Pharmaceutics (BioNTech). But on the consumer tech market, the phones, laptops and streaming services people want? The EU has no presence. Even the auto industry is going to be eaten up by China, because Europe simply pivoted too late to EVs. I know someone who works at Renault and they're just terrified of the cars that are coming out of China.

[mijoharas]

> The dozens -> 2 simplifications occurred on the purely free market.

That was also done by the European Commission[0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply

[serbuvlad]

That was not done by the European Commission. It was a document with no legal power. And it was an acknowledgment of an existing market trend. non-iPhones had already began converging on USB charging (including mini-USB and micro-USB) in the years before.

By the time the EU actually first proposed regulation on the matter, which was only in 2020, there were in effect three ports on the phone market: the Apple Lightning was still used in iPhones, and the rest of the market was undergoing an orderly migration from the cheaper micro-USB port, to the more expensive but better USB-C port.

So yes, the free market was entirely responsible for transitioning from dozens of ports to 3 ports, and would have very likely eventually transitioned to 2 ports. The fact that the EU made recommendation to that effect years ago after the trend had begun that was purely voluntary is an entirely irrelevant datum.

[iamflimflam1]

This is how good legislation works.

Good legislators let it be known that a situation is unacceptable and that legislation is coming.

Good companies respond to that and start to align with the legislation.

When the legislation becomes law - no one is shocked or surprised or caught out.

[arp242]

EUPL almost 19 years old (first published in Jan 2007).

[kalaksi]

I don't think you actually know the history.

[rsynnott]

... Eh? It's from 2007. Licenses like this weren't at all common at the time; there was the original Affero license, but AGPLv3, the first version to see widespread use, didn't come out until later.