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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[–] original_reader@lemmy.zip 53 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Do Android next. Please.

[–] atmorous@lemmy.world 29 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

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

[–] BenjiRenji@feddit.org 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

You need hardware vendors on board or you'll get nowhere.

[–] CelestialBunny@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Eh, Europe is an important enough market that they could use legislation to get the desired result out of hardware vendors, or something close enough to it. If the EU or a majority of European nations stipulated that everything had to be compatible with open source operating systems I'm pretty confident that it would happen. There would be pushback. Likely they'd claim that it'd impede their ability to turn a profit, create development cost issues, and be extremely insecure, but once things were set into motion they would find a way to make it work.

[–] BenjiRenji@feddit.org 1 points 14 hours ago

Yeah, I don't disagree with that. Just wanted to highlight that strong software projects are not enough.

I work in SW for a device vendor and I see how much communication there is between OS, vendors and everything in between.

[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Nokia, Fairphone, Volla. All EU Vendors.

[–] Batmorous@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

2025 OpenInfra Summit Europe

Motorola too to add on

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Nokia doesn't do phones anymore. HMD Global (Finnish company) bought the Nokia brand for phones and used it but apparently they've switched away from it recently.

[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago

That's correct but their old Software Team is still in business, rebranded to Jolla with the SailfishOS. Mostly available to flash on Sony smartphones, or near every Linux phone.