Thanks for your kind words and thoughtful questions! :)

Here’s the quick breakdown:

Why a Company?

In Germany, liability protection is essential for any public project. Using an existing company (a common practice) minimizes personal risk. Many projects operate similarly - they just don’t always highlight their legal structure. We’re transparent because the law requires an imprint, not because we’re "corporate".

Data Ownership

Public facts (e.g., product/company names) can’t be copyrighted. Contributors' data remains public knowledge. We only claim copyright on our own original content and creative work. We also double-check all hints submitted and then create the complete data set.

Why Not Open Source?

We respect open-source ideals but saw other projects struggle with clutter/inefficiency. We opted for a focused, curated approach to keep the database simple and user-friendly which seems to work exactly as intended based on your and other users' feedback.

Why Not Non-Profit?

First of all, we started the project overnight and therefore opted for an existing structure. German non-profits require heavy paperwork and oversight - overkill for a small, revenue-free project that we already invest a lot of time in but want to limit the financial spending. Also: No donations = no risk of mismanagement, which unfortunately happens left and right in the non-profit world.

Therefore personally what I would care about as a user or contributor:

• How are donations used (if any)?
• How is the revenue used (if any)? There could be great reasons to generate revenue to further grow the project!
• Is there transfer of ownership of work that can actually be copyrighted if I contribute?
• Why is it a company and not a non-profit?

Our Intent

This is a passion project:

• To support a cause we care about.
• To learn and experiment with new technology.
• To offer a streamlined database that follows our vision.

Hope this helps and can be used as a reference in the future as these valid questions came up before and we answered them via other channels in the past.

Although nobody asked here yet: We went with .net as whatever we thought was a catchy name was not available in the .eu domain space. We obviously would have chosen .eu if it was available but people registered all those domain names to then not use same as it often happens on the Internet.

Thanks for the ping! :)

Thank you for the kind words! :)

Fantastic work! Hope the Qwant/Ecosia coop creates a powerful search index.

This is the way! Excited to try it!

Feel free to add to our database but there are already alternatives listed: https://buy-european.net/alternative-to/zoom

Maybe we could switch the link to the frontpage instead of the "categories" subpage? We added a 'Search' button on the front page as the main 'entrance' in order for people to more quickly find what they are looking for. Thanks for all your work for the movement!

Thanks for the feedback! We already have badges identifying same on the website: https://buy-european.net/ Would indeed be a good idea to add them to the infographics too.

It might become a valuable resource either by people manually deciding by the listed country if they want to use the company/product or once we implement labels that highlight EU based entities. So if it's okay for the post to stay in the EU based community, great. If not, understandable too.

We are not "Buy EU", we are "Buy European". In the future we might differentiate between different "types" of European commitment (like EU manufacturing, European manufacturing, Outside Europe manufacturing) but right now we include all companies headquartered in Europe. Once we have a sophisticated database we can focus on the details and enriching said data.

Because people snipe domains and then not use it. The only "catchy" domain we found was .net If the .eu owner wants to transfer ownership, we are ready to change it in a heartbeat.

Thanks for the shoutout! We appreciate data contributors submitting new suggestions here: https://buy-european.net/suggest