Tux Machines

Europe is Talking About Software Freedom

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 11, 2025,

updated Dec 11, 2025

A short time ago:

This German State Decides to Save 15 Million Each Year By Kicking Out Microsoft for Open Source

We've recently seen many politicians in Europe speaking about digital independence from the US, mostly for political rather than technical reasons (many Europeans are rightly sceptical of the White House, which treats Europe almost like an enemy rather than an ally).

A reader has taken note of the above, asking me to "refer also to [a] link about Finland flushing ~ 1.2 bn per year down the toilet on Microsoft licensing alone, not counting malware, incompatibilties, clunky UIs and other means of losing productivity".

The original is in Finnish, but we've covered the main points in English:

It seems like the conversation about Software Freedom is changing, even if they use terms such as "sovereignty". Excellent! █