Fuel Autonomy and What It Teaches Us About Software Autonomy (or Software Freedom)
Energy prices - which mostly correlate with availability/abundance - are a key theme/topic in the news these days. The prices of energy impact the price of food (transport, fertilisers etc.) and the price/sales of automobiles (also connected to transport), change the volume of travel/tourists, and generally reduce spendings (people on a tighter budget, as petrol/electricity bills rise, have less left to spend on "unnecessary" purchases... by some definition of unnecessary... some people will compromise their health due to critical affordability considerations).
Does this mean the economy will stagnate beyond the point of fast/easy recovery? Well, that's already happening (see latest Daily Links with focus on Canada and Germany, based on their respective national broadcasters).
In China, a growing dependence on imports of energy will rear its ugly face sooner or later. There are press articles to that effect as well. For now, a lot more fossil fuel "remains in the ground" (maybe it should) and nations that transitioned away from petrochemicals are better off. It's not that they're unaffected (demand grew for fossil fuel alternatives, as did prices), it's just that they have greater control over their destiny. They have more autonomy. We'll spare the discussions about India, China, and Russia (BRIC/S) oil relations and how they impact funding for wars - as "that's politics!"
The media has rightly pointed out that oil reserves are being used if not used up and depleted (they won't last very long; even if the war ends and ships come out, there's still a huge "backlogs", rich nations will hoard what comes out of the channel as they can pay more, and there's repair work needed at extraction/refinement facilities). It's an ugly situation. The "best case scenario" is normality within 12 months. Nations will try to replenish their reserves and maybe build bigger reserves than before (lessons learned from a painful past scarcity).
But what about software? Did Denmark realise that using Microsoft (or GAFAM) is a risk? Did the EU realise this? Did Europe (e.g. Norway)? Norway is willing to be friends with Canada, but it's understandably apprehensive about the US. We added some links about that only an hour ago.
What happens (or may happen) when the US "drops the (digital) bomb" or flips the switch? A lot of American companies already have de facto "kill switches" in their products, including military equipment exported to Europe and elsewhere.
Microsoft sponsors the Cheeto and profits from his racist raids.
Fossil fuels are old (an industrial revolution thing), software is relatively new.
Need we wait until a "software Pearl Harbor" or protect ourselves proactively by weaning ourselves off of GAFAMware? █
Image source: Air freight being loaded on to a airplane