digital infrastructure

Jul 28

Europe builds open-source moats while Britain clings to American tech

Source: The Register: Biting the hand that feeds

Trump's return is accelerating a genuine divergence: the EU is systematically backing open-source alternatives to US platforms as a sovereignty play, while the UK—lacking the regulatory leverage of GDPR and the market size to make demands stick—remains dependent on the Google-Microsoft-Amazon axis. European startups and governments can now operate on non-US infrastructure and gain competitive advantage, while British firms and institutions face recurring risk of US policy whiplash without the tools to opt out.

theme-culture regulation/policy digital infrastructure government technology strategy

Jun 16

France's Microsoft Escape Plan Hits the Office Wall

Source: The Register: Biting the hand that feeds

France's attempt to build digital sovereignty through open-source alternatives like Nextcloud is succeeding at infrastructure (storage) but failing where it matters most—displacing Microsoft Office from daily workflows. The gap reveals that technical sovereignty is nearly worthless without adoption friction small enough for millions of workers to actually cross, and that Microsoft's lock-in isn't primarily about government procurement but about the accumulated switching costs embedded in documents, templates, and muscle memory. Until there's a credible, zero-friction alternative to Office's collaboration features, European governments will keep paying the sovereignty tax while remaining operationally dependent on Redmond.