Remote View

2mo ago

Europe's plan to ditch US tech giants is built on open source - and it's gaining steam

www.zdnet.com Europe's plan to ditch US tech giants is built on open source - and it's gaining steam

One topic dominated the recent 2025 OpenInfra Summit Europe, and it wasn't AI.

Europe is moving decisively away from U.S. tech giants toward open-source alternatives, driven by concerns over digital sovereignty and reliability of American companies[^1]. At the 2025 OpenInfra Summit Europe, industry leaders emphasized that this shift isn't about isolation but resilience.

"What we're really looking for is resilience. What we want for our countries, for our companies, for ourselves, is resilience in the face of unforeseen events in a fast-changing world. Open source allows us to be sovereign without being isolated," said OpenInfra Foundation general manager Thierry Carrez[^1].

This transition is already happening. The German state Schleswig-Holstein has replaced Microsoft Exchange and Outlook with open-source email solutions. Similar moves have been made by the Austrian military, Danish government organizations, and the French city of Lyon[^1].

European companies are stepping up to fill the gap with open-source alternatives, including:

Deutsche Telekom's Open Telekom Cloud
OVHcloud's sovereign cloud services
STACKIT and VanillaCore's European-based offerings[^1]

The movement gained additional momentum when the European Commission appointed its first executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy in 2024[^1].

[^1]: ZDNet - Europe's plan to ditch US tech giants is built on open source - and it's gaining steam

103 comments

They should also fund the projects that they're using. Then everyone benefits.
- Agreed... And they will. They will want functions that are stable and works... They can easily put some funds into that...
- Public money, public infra and public funding? :)
- EU is pretty good at funding stuff actually, but mind your pitchforks if you see Hyprland, Ladybird or some other bigotfueled projects on some collateral-funding list.
  
  Wait what? What's going on with those projects?
- Bingo. Even just a small amount of what they were previously paying the US tech firms would mean huge advancements.
- I'm pretty sure the reason why this won't be happening is (as always): it doesn't make the rich richer and it doesn't have immediate benefits you can point to for your reelection.

A quick reminder in this context: The German government wants to introduce Palantir nationwide, even though this violates applicable law - both at the European and national levels. Contracts have even already been signed in some federal states.
Here is a link to a Campact petition calling on the SPD to block the CDU/CSU's plans.
And here is a petition addressed directly to the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg, demanding that the contract already signed with Palantir be disclosed and revoked.
In my opinion, everyone living in Germany should sign both petitions - it is scandalous that this is even necessary, but unfortunately, conservative german politicians in particular continue to pursue their shady dealings.
- It's an recurrent claim by the right wings, but same as the Chatcontrol, rejected, because incompatibility with the privacy rights in the EU which would be violated with Palantir and the Chat control.. There isn't any reason to introduce the control, because the current law permits an individual chat control in an crime investigation with an court order, but not an global control, which would be the same as open and controlling private cards and correspondence, which obvious is a no go.
  https://www.br.de/nachrichten/netzwelt/eu-ueberwachungsplaene-deutschland-sagt-nein-zu-chatkontrolle,Uz1fO08
  https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/chatkontrolle-eu-deutschland-bmjv-hubig-whatsapp-signal
  https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/chatkontrolle-eu-justizministerin-100.html
- conservative german politicians in particular continue to pursue their shady dealings.
  and will push their gov'ts back into the microsoft/google fold when they approve purchase of the next big system; and you can only hope that palantir isn't it.
- Spread it around with every German you know. Or even post on Germany related communities
- Friendly little reminder:
  "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini

Do Android next. Please.
- A thousand percent yes! Wait wait WAIT BIG IDEA!!!
  Everybody listen up, let's all suggest to EU Countries to partner up with PostmarketOS, Mobian, Ubuntu Touch, & Free Software Foundation's Librephone project so they can all get funding!!
  That way they can get made way faster than they are now
  
  You need hardware vendors on board or you'll get nowhere.

Thierry Carrez commented, "Did you notice what I didn't talk about in my keynote? I made no mention of AI."
...
The world needs sovereign, high-performance and sustainable infrastructure," continued Carrez, "that remains interoperable and secure, while collaborating tightly with AI, containers and trusted execution environments.
He was so close to greatness :(
- Well, respect AI, there is a big one from Swiss, Apertus with its PublicAI, using the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), also used by the CERN. All 100%FOSS and privacy centred. I currently use the PublicAI in my bookmarks (free account (nick,mail). The Apertus dataset can also be downloaded if someone want to selfhost it (~90 GB min)
  
  respect AI
  No thank you. Even if its FOSS it wastes tons of resources.
  
  Why don't we just stop calling it AI and call it software? The Swiss have some potentially very useful maybe even revolutionary software. Ok great, let's see it and let's see what they do.

After so many decades of being reliant on US proprietary tech, now they're moving away to foss?!
Sounds excellent but I'll remain reluctant until I see wide scale adoption.
- Someone else on this post made a huge comment about how Spain has been using lots of Open Source stuff for long time

I mean yeah. Trump could tomorrow make some idiotic statement about tariffs on American cloud services like aws. Seriously, who would be surprised?
Before Trump, nobody would even suggest to distance themselves from the USA. Now, everyone is thinking it.
Great job I guess, if you want a planet where countries are fighting eachother instead of working together. But Trump mentality is that he must be the winner, always. He cant understand that sometimes another country being winner also helps his own. He must be the winner.
He is the typical guy in the sandbox that takes the entire sandbox because its all about him.
- Your comments are not wrong, but also Trump is not the sole issue here. There would still be a problem even if he was removed from office today.
  Proprietary software and services are an issue regardless of which government jurisdiction they fall under. It's a good idea for the EU to be moving to open source instead of proprietary solutions based in the EU.
  
  Yeah 100%. I just dont know if Europe can compete. There is no real European cloud with hundreds of services, and Linux in the enterprise world is much harder to administer than windows. Microsoft is good at selling their enterprise stuff.
  I think all of that is going to put Europe behind. But maybe its good to get started. Perhaps that will actually lead to an entire market for making Linux as good as windows in the enterprise.
- It's not just Trump - there's a reason that Russia, Cuba, China, and North Korea have made moves to adopt Linux. The US has been seeking to weaponize their tech standards for a while, especially as their empire crumbles.
  
  I think it wont crumble during our livetime. But the insane debt is going to make dollars worth less and less. Perhaps they switch to bitcoin... :)

Yeah Canadians are so serious about boycotting the US, except everyone still uses Mastercard, Visa, Android, Google, AWS, Microsoft, Linkedin, Indeed, FB, IG, etc. etc. They can't even press the free delete account button, what a great boycott! Finally after almost a year only the EU is just beginning to discuss digital sovereignty.
- Well, you can't expect the whole net of dependency to be torn down that quickly when it took decades to be established. Especially if you want a somewhat normal life.
  Even before the latest acceleration into fascism I kept looking for alternatives of almost everything I use and the pain is something I've just got used to when it started with switching to Linux only over 20 years ago. Of course I still get envious when iPhone users just quickly AirDrop some pics, so I get why it's not always easy to switch to alternatives.
  But alternatives exist. Exploring them has become a lot more mainstream and they get more funding and support.
  
  When you and your wife send pics over KDE Connect instead is a powerful moment. Still requires one phone to connect to the other over hotspot or be on the same network at home, but its slick otherwise.
- What do Canadians have to do with European tech sovereignty? Why are you trying to hijack this thread?
  And for Canadians, what realistic alternatives are you suggesting for everything you've listed?
  If you want to be taken seriously, start by proposing an actionable plan.
- It will happen though everything takes time and effort. Wonder what a Mastercard/Visa open source alternative would even look like though. Facebook alt I am debating making myself with a team of interested people but building it out to see how it would be done
  Open Source Alternatives:
  PostmarketOS, Mobian, Ubuntu Touch, and FSF Librephone (Europe should partner with them all for funding)
  All kinds of AWS, and Google alts for each product: alternativeto.net shows plenty
  A person is making a LinkedIn/Indeed alternative (They posted on the Open Source community here on Lemmy) and want to make a team overtime too
  Stoat for open source Discord alt also a team in place
  A team is working on Flashes (IG Alt)
  Another team on Spark.so (TTok Alt) 2 decent alternatives for now until we get full blown decentralized options
  
  There's pixelfed for an Instagram alternative, which is based on the activitypub protocol. If flashes is built on bluesky I don't think it will make much of a difference if the protocol is controlled by a company.
  
  I was trying to look up this discord alternative you mentioned - Stoat, but only found water simulation software, any link?
- I don't use Android, Google, Linkedin, Indeed, or FB, and I don't even know what IG is. I didn't bother to close the accounts. Canada has no credit card yet. I paid for MS software before US GOP went nuts.

It seems like backend companies are ready for this, but today, what are the options for individual end users looking to escape google etc? Proton has a package with mail, storage, etc, murena for phones, nextcloud, opencloud, suite numerique, is the industry converging on any standards here like .odt for documents but for other standards and protocols?
- Well, LibreOffice and other free office suites use by default .odt, but all are capable to open and export any other document format, even more than MSOffice is capable to do. In Spain since years administrations and companies are usin LibreOffice and OpenOffice without problems. Spain is one of the most advanced countries in the EU respect OpenSource-
  Open Source Initiatives and Events in Spain
  Spain has several notable open source initiatives and events spanning education, government, and industry:
  Government Initiatives
  The Galician government launched Mancomún in 2006 to promote free and open source software (FOSS), achieving significant cost savings by migrating public administration to LibreOffice and other open source tools[^{9]. By 2018, the government completed migration of all workstations to open source productivity suites, reducing licensing costs by 50% (€1.7 million annually)[}9].
  Major Events
  Open Source Summit Europe takes place in Spain, with the 2023 event held in Bilbao from September 19-21[^{8]. The summit brings together developers, technologists and community leaders to advance open source innovation[}8].
  Education and Resources
  Several Spanish-language open educational resources support learning:
  El Atareao (atareao.es), a Spanish blog focused on GNU/Linux and open source topics[^1]
  Español Abierto, a collection maintained by the University of Texas for Spanish language learners[^3]
  LibriVox's Spanish audiobook collection featuring public domain works[^3]
  Business Adoption
  Major companies recognize Spain's open source expertise. In 2016, Accenture acquired Spanish firm Tecnilógica to expand its open source capabilities, noting the company's skill in "using emerging and open source technologies"[^7].
  [^{1]: [My Linux story: Covering open source in Spanish](https://opensource.com/article/19/11/linux-open-source-spanish)
  [}3]: 6 open educational resources for learning Spanish [^{7]: [Accenture Acquires Tecnilógica to Scale Its Open Source Digital Skills in Spain](https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/2016/accenture-acquires-tecnilogica-to-scale-its-open-source-digital-skills-in-spain)
  [}8]: Open Source Summit Europe (Bilbao, Spain) – Zephyr Project [^9]: Free & Open Source Software in Galicia, Spain: The Mancomún Project
  See also https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/spain-2025-country-report
  
  Wow, Spain is way ahead of my country (Sweden), we have much to learn. Unfortunately our politicians are not the best at the moment, but hopefully in the future.

But steam isn’t open source? /s
- GOG is DRM free though!
- Open steam sauce?
  \ Nah.
  Open sauce steam?
  \ Smart, democratic.
- While I wish there was an Open Source client, I can only imagine why Valve does not want that. First, it would help fakers and scammers too. Steam has a Scammer problem. Secondly, it could help the competition. At least an official API would go a long way, to enable the community to write their own Open Source client based on the API.
  
  Valve doesn't mind allowing the competition to use some of their more critical contributions such as Proton (and SteamOS code outside of the store/client launcher), so I don't consider their situation problematic at all. Heck, competition (such as GOG) can have their users take advantage constantly by having their games load through Proton.
- I think that it don't mean the Steam website, but steam pressure.
  
  /s stands for sarcasm in case you are not aware.

I'm interested to see what an open source cloud standard would look like. There's a lot of elements that share functionality between Azure and AWS, but they're just different enough that it's a massive pain in the arse to move from one to the other and you basically have to re-write your Terraform from scratch.
If there was something that was standard so I could write Terraform that goes "I want thirteen microservices all running in docker containers and a message bus with these types of message that lets them communicate" without specifying the exact implementation, I would be a happy camper.
- This is basically kubernetes with a couple of custom resource definitions, no?
- Maybe something like OpenStack?
  
  OpenStack with Kubernetes on top probably. Openstack gets you the IAAS, but not PAAS, if I understand Openstack correctly.
- nix?
- I think #kubernetes might actually be that - they've got a start with the Kubernetes jobs, etc.

Open source is the only realistic way forward for Europe, since reimplementing popular US platforms from scratch would be a herculean effort. Hopefully there will be a lot more funding and polish for popular projects as a result. Maybe Europe will get serious about using Linux instead of Windows finally.
- Clearly it isn't easy to switch away from US corporative services and the way to go is OpenSource and if not, using instead EU products and services. It's still a long way to go, the way is made walking. It's about souvereignity, not depending on greedy US companies, less with this stupid Australopithecus as President. Time to show him the middlefinger, as at least Spain already does.
  
  Yeah, it's going to be a long process realistically, and hopefully there's actual sustained state level commitment to getting that done from the European countries. Frankly, it should've been obvious why it's a bad idea to become so dependent on foreign tech, but better late than never.

It's almost mind-blowing how people still rely on Azure, Windows, and MS Office for really sensitive shit. Like, MS might as well be an arm of the US Government if they aren't already. All the foreign governments storing sensitive shit in Azure servers is just fucking wild to me. So what if the data centres are stored outside of the USA? The parent company is still the parent company.

not a moment too soon... we've worked on this back in the early 2000s, then Microsoft steamrolled everything with local government contracts (coughtBRIBEScough) and look how well that turned out.
- In Spain there are more and more shops selling PCs only with FreeDOS to the user choice which OS he want to use. I need to use Windows for several reasons, but it's gutted and debloated to the mere OS (<1GB).

The EU should also fulfill the double meaning of the headline and buy Valve corporation from Gabe Newell.

Good! One can no longer trust the current US regime.

I don't begrudge Europe for doing this and they should absolutely keep going this direction but they are going to start sucking even more out of US users. Maybe it will help us move forward.
- The good thing about open source is that it's open, so hopefully it will benefit everyone. Of course, hosting always cost money, but the tech itself isn't locking you in.
  
  Right! Truly a rising tide kind of tech. When Facebook fully shifts from enshittification to fully enfuckified if more of the world is already on FOSS alts and supporting the software ecosystem people will have a meaningful alternative to jump to.
- I don't understand
  
  I assumed they were saying the companies need specific amounts of revenue to cover their debts and if they lose foreign revenue streams, they're going to make it up by increasing domestic prices.
  
  they are going to start sucking even more out of US users even more
  :|
  Maybe that EU kept MS&co in check?
  \ That's not how I see it, but there was some minimal resistance.
  Anyways, open sauce means tech giants are gonna illegally yoink the code, but slap some profit margins on (besides support that is).
  \ That does sux the even more out of users.

Yeah but for this they need to open source the entire tech stack imo. You can run oss on a closed source bootloader, but the end result will still be the enshittification and hardware lock-down.
Auditable open source hardware and wireless-chips are the real deciding factor in the long game!

103 comments

Open Source Initiatives and Events in Spain

Government Initiatives

Major Events

Education and Resources

Business Adoption