Real independence in computing is not a mood, a slogan, or a penguin sticker on a laptop. It is the ability to inspect the code, keep control of your data, switch suppliers without tearing apart your workflows, and refuse a licence change without watching your institution grind to a halt. Linux and open-source software matter because they turn freedom into something operational. For an individual, that means choice. For a government, it means sovereignty.
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Europe’s own institutions are starting to describe the issue in exactly those terms. The European Commission says open source supports digital autonomy, sharing and reuse, and lower costs to society. In early 2026 it also acknowledged that European governments and companies remain heavily dependent on non-EU digital technologies even though open source underpins 70 to 90 percent of all code in the digital economy.
Independence is a technical condition
The real dividing line is not “free versus paid.” It is controlled versus dependent. If your systems rely on closed formats, closed tooling, non-negotiable cloud terms, and a single supplier’s roadmap, then your freedom is mostly decorative. You are operating on borrowed terms.
The Commission’s own strategy is unusually clear on this point. It says open-source and proprietary solutions should be assessed on an equal basis using total cost of ownership, including exit costs. That is a more serious test than licence price alone, because it asks the question many public bodies avoid until too late: what happens when we need to leave?
EU guidance on ICT procurement describes vendor lock-in in blunt language. When a public authority is too dependent on one supplier, competition weakens, flexibility shrinks, and value for money erodes over time. The same guidance notes that lock-in often shows up in procurement documents through brand-specific requirements or demands for backward compatibility with proprietary systems that only a small circle of vendors can realistically serve.
That is why Linux and open source are political questions disguised as technical ones. They decide who can inspect the machinery, who can maintain it, who can replace it, and who gets to set the price of staying alive inside it.
The savings case is real, but the bigger prize is leverage
The money argument is not fantasy. A European Commission-commissioned study estimated that companies in the EU invested around €1 billion in open-source software in 2018 and generated an economic impact of €65 billion to €95 billion. The same study says public bodies procuring open source instead of proprietary software can reduce total cost of ownership, avoid vendor lock-in, and increase digital autonomy.
That still needs to be handled carefully. The phrase “save billions” is directionally credible at national or continental scale, especially over several budget cycles, but it is not a magic spreadsheet trick. Migration costs are real. Training is real. Workflow adaptation is real. Schleswig-Holstein’s own strategy says a multi-vendor transition costs more at the start than simply keeping the old infrastructure running, even while arguing that the long-term model is healthier and less restrictive.
Where the budget actually moves
| Proprietary dependency | Open-source strategy |
|---|---|
| Recurring spend goes to licences, renewals, forced upgrades, and vendor-controlled bundles | Spend shifts toward support, integration, training, maintenance, and development work |
| Leaving is expensive because formats, contracts, and workflows are entangled | Switching is easier because open standards and replaceable suppliers create room to move |
The point is not that open source eliminates spending. It changes who receives the money and what the institution gets in return. Schleswig-Holstein explicitly frames this as redirecting funds from licence fees toward support contracts and development orders, while the Commission’s procurement guidance argues that better competition lowers long-run costs. One EU procurement estimate cited by the Commission suggests that doubling the number of bidders can reduce contract values by about 9 percent.
That shift matters politically as much as financially. Money spent on local support, implementation, and upstream development tends to build capability inside the market around you. Money spent on inescapable licensing mostly buys permission to continue depending on somebody else.
Governments already use open source more than the debate admits
The common complaint is that governments do not use Linux or open source. The more accurate version is that many governments already use them, but too often in fragments, pilots, or backend layers while the strategic defaults remain proprietary.
The European Commission created its own Open Source Programme Office in 2020. The EU Digital Identity Wallet reference implementation is based on open-source components. Denmark’s OS2 network now brings together 82 public bodies, representing 84 percent of Danish municipalities, to build and maintain shared public digital solutions under open-source licences.
Schleswig-Holstein offers the strongest recent European example. The German state made open-source migration an explicit sovereignty strategy, built an OSPO, pushed ODF and LibreOffice, and treated Linux not as a hobbyist preference but as part of a public-sector architecture. By early 2026, according to Interoperable Europe, it had completed migration of more than 44,000 mailboxes and 110 million emails and calendar entries to Open-Xchange and Thunderbird, moved 80 percent of its office ecosystem to LibreOffice, and reported €15 million in licensing savings, with €9 million reinvested after switching costs and related expenses.
France’s Gendarmerie remains the classic earlier case. In an archived but still relevant public-sector report, it described a gradual move from Microsoft-based systems to Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird, and estimated €50 million in savings on licences, hardware, and maintenance since 2004. It also cut annual proprietary licence purchases dramatically.
So the honest question is not why governments never use Linux and open source. The honest question is why they so rarely make them the default where the fit is obvious.
The hard part sits inside institutions, not on the desktop
Public administrations are full of old systems layered on older systems. Canada’s government, in its own open standards guidance, describes legacy infrastructure as a major obstacle to interoperability in public administration because fragmented systems are difficult to connect and hard to replace cleanly. That diagnosis travels well across borders. Anyone who has seen a ministry’s procurement stack, records systems, templates, macros, and reporting chains knows the problem is rarely a single operating system choice.
There is also a quieter obstacle that never shows up in ideological debates: habits. People do not merely use software. They build reflexes around it. They inherit old documents, departmental templates, plug-ins, mail flows, spreadsheet rituals, and support shortcuts that nobody wrote down. Schleswig-Holstein’s strategy takes that seriously, which is why it pairs LibreOffice rollout with a broad training package that includes guides, manuals, video learning, classroom training, and a user forum. That is what competent migration looks like.
Security adds another layer of confusion. Open source is not secure by magic, and proprietary software is not secure because the source is hidden. Security is a governance problem before it is a licensing model. The European Commission’s EU-FOSSA programme existed to audit critical open-source software, run bug bounties, encourage fixes, and build relationships with developer communities maintaining software used by public institutions and the wider public. The lesson is straightforward: visibility helps, but only if institutions also fund maintenance, reporting, and remediation.
This is where many governments hesitate. A proprietary contract can create the comforting illusion that responsibility has been outsourced. An open-source strategy forces the state to behave more like an adult owner of infrastructure.
The desktop matters, but open standards matter more
A surprising amount of public-sector lock-in begins with documents. Not glamorous systems. Documents. Templates, spreadsheets, archives, forms, procurement attachments, ministerial decks, compatibility demands, and years of institutional muscle memory wrapped around one vendor’s format.
Schleswig-Holstein put this at the center of its strategy. It treats the switch to the Open Document Format, together with the replacement of office software by LibreOffice, as one of the major milestones on the road to a digitally sovereign workplace. It also notes something important for governments that fear disruption: LibreOffice can run on terminals based on either Windows or Linux, which makes phased migration possible.
That is the practical lesson too many debates miss. You do not win digital freedom simply by replacing Windows with Linux on day one. You win it by making your documents, interfaces, and procurement rules portable enough that no vendor can trap you. Open standards are the hinge between lofty talk about sovereignty and the messy, boring reality of civil-service computing. The Commission’s strategy and procurement guidance both point in that direction.
Schleswig-Holstein is unusually explicit about the alternative. Its strategy warns about cloud migration imposed on vendor terms, high licence fees, telemetry outflows, audits, and practically non-negotiable conditions tied to dominant proprietary ecosystems. That is not a mere preference dispute between software tribes. It is a statement about where public authority ends and supplier power begins.
A government strategy that deserves the word sovereign
A serious open-source policy is rarely romantic. It starts with open standards in documents and interfaces, total-cost accounting that includes exit costs, procurement rules that do not hard-code brand dependence, governance through an OSPO or equivalent unit, and dedicated money for support and upstream contribution.
That is not theory anymore. The Commission has formalized open-source governance and procurement principles. Schleswig-Holstein has turned sovereignty into a state migration programme. Denmark’s OS2 shows that public bodies can collaborate on shared code instead of paying dozens of times for versions of the same solution under different contracts.
Linux then stops being an identity marker and becomes what it should have been all along: a public instrument. It fits especially well in environments that are already browser-based, standardized, security-sensitive, or built around web applications and open formats. Where specialized software is unavoidable, governments can still move other layers first: formats, mail, collaboration, identity components, servers, procurement models, and support structures. The point is not purity. The point is reducing hostage points.
This is also where the economic argument matures. The best public-sector open-source strategies do not merely chase lower licence bills. They build bargaining power, spread spending across a healthier supplier landscape, and keep public digital infrastructure governable.
Freedom becomes real when states build capability
The fantasy version of this debate says governments could save billions simply by replacing one desktop icon with another. Reality is harder, slower, and more interesting than that. States save serious money when they stop buying lock-in, stop confusing subscriptions with stability, and start treating software as infrastructure that must remain inspectable, replaceable, and governable. The EU’s own evidence already says the public sector can lower total cost of ownership and gain digital autonomy through open source, while recent examples from Denmark, France, the Commission, and Schleswig-Holstein show that the model is not fringe and not hypothetical.
Linux and open-source software do not abolish cost. They put cost back under human control. That is why they feel like freedom to individuals. And that is why, for governments, they increasingly look like the most practical form of digital sovereignty available.
Author:
Jan Bielik
CEO & Founder of Webiano Digital & Marketing Agency
This article is an original analysis supported by the sources cited below
Open source software strategy
European Commission strategy page outlining digital autonomy, sharing and reuse, procurement on equal terms, and the role of the Commission’s OSPO.
https://commission.europa.eu/about/departments-and-executive-agencies/digital-services/open-source-software-strategy_en
The impact of open source software and hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy
European Commission-commissioned study on economic impact, cost-benefit ratios, vendor lock-in, and public-sector total cost of ownership.
https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/84834aa9-2c2d-11ec-bd8e-01aa75ed71a1
Commission opens call for evidence on Open-Source Digital Ecosystems
European Commission update framing open source as part of technological sovereignty and noting its central role in the digital economy.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-opens-call-evidence-open-source-digital-ecosystems
Open Standards for ICT Procurement
Interoperable Europe guidance on vendor lock-in, procurement design, and competition in public-sector IT.
https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eprocurement/open-standards-ict-procurement
Open First Whitepaper: Open Standards
Government of Canada guidance explaining legacy-system and interoperability barriers inside public administration.
https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-government/digital-government-innovations/open-source-software/open-first-whitepaper/open-first-whitepaper-standards.html
Open Innovation and Open Source Strategy of Land Schleswig-Holstein
Official Schleswig-Holstein page describing the state’s November 2024 strategy for digital sovereignty, open standards, Linux, LibreOffice, and OSPO governance.
https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/themen/digitalisierung/linux-plus1/Projekt/open-source-strategie
Schleswig-Holstein’s Open Source Strategy, a year on
Interoperable Europe report with recent migration results, mailbox figures, LibreOffice rollout, and reported savings data.
https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/schleswig-holsteins-open-source-strategy-year
OS2 – Public Digitalization Network in Denmark
Official OS2 overview page with current membership and collaboration figures across Danish municipalities and public bodies.
https://www.os2.eu/in-english
European Digital Identity
European Commission page noting that the EU Digital Identity Wallet reference implementation is built from open-source components.
https://commission.europa.eu/topics/digital-economy-and-society/european-digital-identity_en
FR: Gendarmerie saves millions with open desktop and web applications
Interoperable Europe archive on the French Gendarmerie’s long-running open-source migration and reported savings.
https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/egovernment/news/fr-gendarmerie-saves-million
EU-FOSSA 2 – Free and Open Source Software Auditing
European Commission page on bug bounties, audits, and security work around critical open-source software.
https://commission.europa.eu/about/departments-and-executive-agencies/digital-services/eu-fossa-2-free-and-open-source-software-auditing_en
