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].
Call me a pessimist, but I’ve seen news from German cities or states that switched to open source in the past, and they never stuck with it. The biggest issue with open source is that a lot of time there is no one available to hold the hand of the computer illiterate, which results in failed adoption rates.
In my experience its irrelevant for the computer illiterate whether its OSS or M$S… They’ll always need handholding until they learn their workflow. At least my experience working as IT.
Of course as soon as an update changes the UI slightly they need to go through the whole process again xD
In my experience its irrelevant for the computer illiterate whether its OSS or M$S… They’ll always need handholding until they learn their workflow.
Very true, but most commercial software products have a lot of the hand holding integrated, where OSS doesn’t and as a result has a steeper learning curve. OSS developers aren’t interested in software support a lot of the time, quite a few just maintain it as a hobby. See this answer in the Putty FAQ for instance.
The solution is to get open source into schools early. Idk how tech education is across the EU, but here in the US kids are usually introduced to computers as early as elementary school (but I think today they might be using ipads or chromebooks instead). In my highschool, we were required to get Microsoft office certification before we’d even be allowed to graduate, which pissed me off even back then.
I hate Microsoft with all my heart but I think it’s smart to have some sort of general computer skills.
I grew up having to take keyboarding and learning about office software (Apple’s suite at the time but later Office in community college).
From what I hear the kids can’t even type, never mind actually navigating a filesystem or troubleshooting basic issues.
Minus the office certification it’s the same over here.
I don’t think Microsoft will hold your hand. It’s the local IT or usage support.
In my eyes the main issue is the decision makers falling for familiarity and marketing/sales pushing.
Which makes it even more absurd/ironic that after the switch investment, they invest again into a switch into something that is not really better.
Either way, this time though, there’s a lot more relevance and pressure to make a change, and a lasting change. The environment is not the same as before.
The help function and documentation of Microsoft looks like holding hands if you compare it to most open source projects.
I need sources on this. How many times has it happened?
Munich in 2006 (limux project), and Freiburg returned to MS from OpenOffice in 2014.
Munich switched back to MultipleSklerosis after a corrupt mayor decided it to have the MS main office be moved to Munich.
Freiburg didn’t “return” to MS office, it never left. It was running OpenOffice and MS Office in parallel. You could call it the end of a test. And also, unsurprisingly, it was stopped by the Christian “Democrats”, just like in Munich.
The examples are more than a decade, 3 governments, and multiple wars old. The only constant is the presence of the Christian Democrats who can cock it up.
I diffusely remember reading about two/twice. But I can’t provide sources either.
Better late than never.
