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

submitted 2 months ago by Zerush@lemmy.ml to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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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

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[-] Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] Damage@feddit.it 4 points 2 months ago

I don't understand

[-] WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com 4 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 months ago

Yes, this is what I meant.

Or just they make this much money so to continue making this amount they have to up prices somehow.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 months ago

They didn't necessarily keep them in check, but maybe kept growth slower Initially. However this is not my area, so take it with as much salt as you'd like.

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[-] PlanterTree@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 months ago

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!

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