The International Criminal Court is ditching Microsoft software for an open source alternative
This might be an isolated instance, but it might not. If I were any of the big US tech companies, I would be doing some serious thinking.
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This is becoming more common in the EU with districts requiring public bodies to move away from US Controlled entities.
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Some Canadian companies are slowly doing this as well.
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I can’t imagine why…
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Cory Doctorow has written about this extensively, among other things other countries should do to get away from US tech dominance, now that Trump has gone back on some of the initial promises when these deals were made. Will be interesting to see how it plays out. US is definitely losing trust, which is sad to see.
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It is! Here in Germany we have the northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein attempting to do something similar. Donald Trump’s dynamic decision making leads to a lot of rethinking of (tech) sovereignty.
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To be fair, this is common in the US where governmental agencies buy US-only either software or hardware.
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Yep, it’s a thing. A lot of movement away from US based entities is in the works. Now, practically speaking, it’s pretty darn hard to switch away from AWS/GCP/Azure and Office, so it will probably be a decades long project.
My only hope is that European entities will start to contribute significantly to the many open source projects that are currently getting by on shoestring budgets and with very small and overworked teams.
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That’ would be good. One problem with open source software is everyone assumes someone else is looking at the code.
A few years ago a vulnerability was discovered in the Log4j program, “one of the most widely deployed open source programs in the world” that granted hackers total control of devices running it. It was an interesting time.
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Yes, it will take a long time and be expensive but this trend will continue regardless of who is president I think.
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The current estimate is that FOSS will have 10% desktop share by 2030. With nations now concerned with whether their national data will be safe from foreign interference this might even accelerate that. Add to this massive savings in licensing costs and the already fairly mature field of FOSS software, Microsoft and Apple have everything to lose.
It is speculated that once governments adopt FOSS desktop large scale it will impact what education uses and teaches to equip the next generation entering the workforce as well as what businesses adopt to interface with their local council and national government.
The next decade will be interesting to see what happens!
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That’s true regardless of any other changes that countries may make. Desktop business software is already evolving due to AI.
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The problem, on a massively larger scale, seems to be the same one Apple would face should it try to leave China. The New York Times, on June 4, 2025 said “The world’s most valuable company has become so reliant on Chinese suppliers and sales that it would be worth half as much or less without them.”
I can understand Europe’s concern, but it’s sad to think that friends couldn’t find a way to work together.
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I agree that the current situation is very sad. Maybe a future administration will be viewed as more reliable but the current is too erratic. I hope that the madness will end soon but am afraid that it will take a long time to rebuild trust.
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That’s understandable. “Once burned, twice shy”
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Straying pretty close to politics with this one so gonna wind it down.
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