Since the dawn of the Internet, the globalization of the world has been going into an acceleration. The rise of Big Tech, mostly located in the USA conquered the world with its applications, data and algorithms. Development continued, and huge Big Tech Cloud providers emerged, Google, Microsoft, Amazon. Again mostly controlled by Big Tech in the USA. Most algorithms used by Big Tech are proprietary, so closed source, meaning that we as individuals can not enforce our four freedoms. We can not study the source code that is influencing our lives, and next to that, the data is often stored on US soil. This means that a lot of the data about our lives is, in fact, under US control.
So the world came into a situation where the technological developments created an unwanted situation, where nations, companies and private individuals could not enforce their own sovereignty.
So how can #foss #floss open source help with getting this sovereignty back?
To get the sovereignty back two essential things are needed, storage in a controllable environment and the ability to examine the algorithms. While we could solve the first part with proprietary solutions, the second is impossible with closed software. But also for the data storage Open Source solutions are possible. In the next two paragraphs of this article we will discuss three scenario's to get sovereignty by open source. In the first scenario we will discuss how a european government, like that of the Netherlands could get its sovereignty back by using open source. In the second scenario we will work out how a private person could get back it's sovereignty. In the third scenario we will talk about the setup for a company.
First Scenario: Dutch Government
Governments in the EU have clear regulations concerning which companies can develop projects for the government. There are regulations that favor FOSS technologies, but they are often not enforced. The Dutch government could follow the Swiss and create a law which states "public money == public code", enforcing that everything that is created for the government is always free and open source software, and that all data is stored within the EU.
When creating a working environment for the personal of the government, some addictions need to be treated. There are many governments that are addicted to Microsoft, so how could we detox them. So let's create a stack of software, that is fully foss and can substitute most of the proprietary software used. The email we will organize with Zimra. Microsoft Teams will be substituted by a combination of Mattermost and a file structure with Nextcloud. Office 365 will be exchanged for Collabora office. Project management and other ERP functionality we will be organized with the Odoo community.
The Second Scenario: A Private Person
As a private person, you can install a Linux distribution on your computer, with software like LibreOffice for the word processing, spreadsheets, and drawing functionality. For Photoshop, you could use Gimp and in fact for any proprietary program, there are suitable professional open source solutions. The main issue is the usage of Social Media. There are not really substitutes for applications like TikTok, Instagram or Facebook, at least not with the broad coverage of those data-stealing mediums. Instead of Twitter/X you could use Mastodon. Matrix is also an interesting platform that is emerging. Peertube can be a good solution instead of YouTube, while of course the amount of available video's is not directly comparable. Instead of Whatsapp you could use Telegram or Signal. For data storage you can use an application like Nextcloud.
The Third Scenario: A company like OS-SCi
In our software stack, we use Ubuntu Linux on all computers. We use Odoo Community as an ERP solution, which supports all our business processes. From accountancy, to creating invoices, project management, but also our website. The data is stored in Nextcloud. We use Zimra as an email server and Libre-Office for our office-automation. Our e-learning environment runs on OpenEDX and the students communicate through Mattermost. All cloud servers we use are from European partner on EU soil. We do not use one single piece of proprietary software.
In all three scenarios we have seen that it's possible to get your sovereignty back, use only foss applications and store your data on local soil.
If you want more information about open source, just visit the Open Source Event on November 23 November in "de Lochal" Tilburg The Netherlands..