[CactusOnFire]

I'm neither European nor do I have to deal with their standards, but this seems like a false equivocation.

Physical Engineering standards serve a different purpose than software standards. Engineering standards are a social contract we all buy into because of the incredibly cost and complexity of designing physical infrastructure.

Software is not constrained by the same standards. It's alright if the firmware of a coffee machine and a cell phone run on a different standard, but it's going to cause problems if each of my sockets has a different grounding.

[paulddraper]

I mean...there is an analogy there.