[buran77]

Such a collaboration has the potential to save time, money, effort, and increase quality. But in reality it either ends up being "design by committee", or a few of the countries are the drivers and the rest are the followers who try all kinds of maneuvers to retain some control.

Even if this is done under the umbrella of an EU institution, the politics work the same way except now every other country is trying all kinds of maneuvers in an attempts to retain as much of the control as possible.

[Kinrany]

Power games happen in every large scale collaboration that does anything of value. This is not a reason to refuse doing it altogether.

[buran77]

You're saying how things should be. I told you how they are, from experience with both worlds. I have the impression you are vastly underestimating the "power games" happening at country/union level compared to the ones in a company.

In the usual company there is a reasonably clear hierarchy, if someone doesn't fall in line some superior dons the big boots and drop kicks them all the way past the company parking lot without some democratic process behind it. Each level is accountable to the higher one.

At country level there's no such thing. It more like a lot of different companies sometimes reluctantly agreeing to work together, while not owing each other anything, and being subjected to the whims of the people back home (managers and citizens). There is no true hierarchy, no supreme authority, the accountability isn't towards the committee but towards superiors "back home" to get specific interests pushed. And if they don't make the cut you can always pack up your toys and go, maybe even turn it into a win back home ("we retain full control"). You want to look good for the managers and the citizens at home, not the ones in the committee. National pride, ego, politics on the world stage are very strong factors at play. If there is some obligation to contribute it also had to come democratically in a process to which your country participated.

These aren't power plays inside a company, they are the power plays between big companies. Except with a lot of nationalistic aspects and actual politics sprinkled in. And you can't even buy cooperation like in a commercial case.

So calling them "power games" is correct in principle but not at all useful to gauge the difference in scale in the 2 cases.

[Kinrany]

EU is a collaboration between countries where anyone can veto anything, yet they still manage to pass laws. Open source is much easier in comparison: no need for full consensus and no way to retract code that has already been published.