Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working drivers for Linux?
They don&#x27;t necessarily have to: there&#x27;s another, more comprehensive hammer they (or the US for that matter) could use: disallow vertical integration.<p>Force hardware vendors to <i>only</i> sell hardware. If any software that can be changed remotely or by the user is off limits. Even firmware. Conversely, software vendors can <i>only</i> sell (or freely distribute) software. For vendors from abroad, don&#x27;t go extra-territorial, just force them to chose: either they only sell hardware in the EU, or they only sell software.  Intel and microsoft would have no problem. NVDIA might complain very loudly. Apple would likely have to split itself.<p>Now the complicated part is how to define a company. We don&#x27;t want a single company to just split itself into 2 legal entities that work so closely together they might as well be the same company.<p>Do that, and you&#x27;ll get much better than device drivers for <i>one</i> free OS. You&#x27;ll get the necessary specs required to make it work on <i>all</i> OSes. Even better, the user-facing hardware interface will start to matter, and there will be some selection pressure to drive the more complex ones, or the non-standard ones, out of the market. (Won&#x27;t be ideal, I can see a particular over-complex architecture win out, similar to x86, but at least there won&#x27;t be that many left, so writing a driver for most devices will actually be possible).