> The real issue being why Autodesk was allowed to basically buy most of its main competitors in the 3D/CAD authoring tool space without any push back from gove

> The real issue being why Autodesk was allowed to basically buy most of its main competitors in the 3D/CAD authoring tool space without any push back from government agencies. That's not even remotely true. There's Dassault/Catia, Siemens/NX, PTC/Creo, and probably a dozen (or more) niche competitors. The real problem is massive vendor lock-in. Each CAD company goes out of their way to have crappy interop with the others.