cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37846820
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[1:1].
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[1:2].
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[1:3]
The movement gained additional momentum when the European Commission appointed its first executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy in 2024[1:4].
I wonder if the US tech oligarchs have realized they traded in soft power the world over for hard power that likely will not even last that long by backing a monarch.
Some of them must have. Others are too detached from reality and busy telling their subordinates to put AI into smart beds to notice.
me in the US
And all it took was one mail address being blocked at the ICC in the Netherlands to kick them into action. Before that, the problem was mostly theoretical.
Good luck. We wouldn’t want to violate their sovereignty.
those are the same folks who are virtually killing OSS ecosystem in Android…
Umm I think it is Google who are trying to kill access to FOSS. How can you blame the EU for that ?
Google aren’t seriously trying to blame someone else for their own choices now are they ?
Android a thing pushed by a US tech firm.
I agree with you though
