There is nothing proprietary about the inch. It's 2.54 cm. We don't have a secret "reference inch" kept under lock and key that everyone else has to ape with reverse engineering or anything. And it's used with great success in more countries than just the U.S.
Why not just use centimeters directly like the rest of the world? I've started to get used to measurements here in the US, except for Fahrenheit. My trick is to mentally approximate using: 32+2*C.
