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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] pmk@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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?

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

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 [^3]: 6 open educational resources for learning Spanish [^7]: Accenture Acquires Tecnilógica 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

[–] pmk@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 3 days ago

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.