[Silhouette]

Regulation is sometimes necessary to ensure businesses operate in useful ways for the societies they serve. But a specific regulation is only helpful if it constrains undesirable behaviours without causing disproportionate amounts of collateral damage.

Unfortunately governments in general and the EU in particular have a poor track record of making helpful regulations for businesses operating in STEM fields. Not many politicians have a STEM background themselves and not many have much experience of smaller businesses or grass roots volunteer work beyond a quick photo op. A field like software where a single individual can make a disproportionate contribution and where a lot of the FOSS we depend on every day was written at least partially by volunteers is probably quite alien to them.

Until the politicians are better educated the overall state of regulation will continue to be poor. Unfortunately until the small businesses and the FOSS world can speak at the same volume as corporate lobbyists and PR firms with multimillion budgets the politicians will probably continue to be poorly informed. In most places we have nothing like that level of coordination among the smaller players yet.

[denton-scratch]

> A field like software where a single individual can make a disproportionate contribution and where a lot of the FOSS we depend on every day was written at least partially by volunteers is probably quite alien to them.

Oh my! An awful lot of contributors to FOSS are europeans.

[redeeman]

but not eurocrats sitting in brussels thinking about how to regulate cucumbers and vacuum cleaning speeds

[troupo]

Literally every country does that. The US, for example outlaws Kinder Surprise.

Why are people so hung up on the EU?

[redeeman]

because this is a thread about EU policies?