In practice, what’s the difference between a government mandated license and a government that quickly rules in favor of parties who are damaged by companies that don’t use licensed software engineers?

E.g. “Your software caused serious damages to our company / livelihood, and you best hope that it turns up in discovery that you used properly licensed software engineers who were following licensing best practices, otherwise this will be a slam dunk case.”

Genuinely an interesting question to me. Seems like the latter is a better option, generally, but it does lock restorative justice behind a paywall - you have to be able to afford a lawyer.

They don't rule based on licensing. They rule based on damages. Your insurance might rule based on licensing.