Comment by m4nu3l

The point is, if the regulation works as intended, it consolidates USB-C as the standard and slows or blocks new types of ports from being designed and tested. If it doesn't, then it's useless. You can't have it both ways.

Imagine a company that wants to design the next type of port. Normally, it would just do R&D and engineer the product, then put it on the market with that type of port. If the device only has that type of port, people must use it and provide feedback by choosing to keep buying the product (maybe they'll also make it explicit that they like the new port). If this phase is successful and the company opens the specs and other companies adopt it, it might become a de facto standard.

Now consider doing it with the current regulation. You need to do R&D, but the design will require higher costs because you have to make the device work with the old USB-C, too.

Maybe it's not a high cost for the company, so they do it anyway. People might use the port much less because some may not even try the new port and stick to the USB-C for simplicity, or because they are accustomed to it.

So the company won't have the same strong feedback. But let's assume they manage to make most users happy to use the new one because it's so much better. Now they open the standard. Other companies have to pay the additional engineering costs to add the other port. Some might be able to afford it just fine, while others might not want to add the complexity and costs of two ports.

Let's say, however, it spreads anyway. Now you hope the EU will accept it as a new standard so you can ditch the now-old USB-C standard. But the EU might just say "NO". It's very hard to predict if the government would be happy with it.

Given the compounding of these effects, the result is most likely that the company won't even think about wanting to develop the next standard.

The probability of a new standard happening is much reduced. And as I said before, if it weren't reduced, then the regulation would be useless to begin with, as people would use and test different connectors regardless of the USB-C support.

As I said in the root comment, I don't care too much about the connectors not evolving, but it just goes to show that people don't realise that there is no free lunch. Add constraints, and you add costs and slow down progress.

You can't force companies to add value with no costs, and value is also subjective, so the government often doesn't know what is valuable to people. At most, the government might know what some people say is valuable to them. But this is not the same thing.

Very few people would have said smartphones were the future, and they would buy one in 2007. Democracy is a very bad way for economic and technological progress to happen - unless it's for some military technology for which the government is the only customer.