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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[–] Batmorous@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

[–] _donnadie_@feddit.cl 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Batmorous@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I completely forgot about Pixelfed. Haven't tried it yet any clients you would recommend for it?

[–] _donnadie_@feddit.cl 1 points 31 minutes ago

There's the Pixelfed app, Pixelix and PixelDroid. Of the three I'd say the most functional is PixelDroid, but the interface isn't as good as the others. Pixelix feels faster than Pixelfed but in my phone it has an issue with JSON saying I'm unauthenticated.

The Pixelfed app works, but it's a bit slow, and doesn't have as much functionality as PixelDroid. PixelDroid lets you easily see all feeds (feeds for people you follow, local and global feeds), which Pixelfed somehow doesn't let you access, which kinda destroys the point of using a federated social network.

[–] ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was trying to look up this discord alternative you mentioned - Stoat, but only found water simulation software, any link?

[–] Batmorous@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Here is their alternativeto.net info page: https://alternativeto.net/software/revolt-chat/about/ (Great website to find open source alternatives to other stuff as well)

And here is their actual website: https://stoat.chat/