Magazine

Critical analysis, migration playbooks, and governance guides. Curated insights for decision-makers building the sovereign open enterprise.

Open Code has no Nationality.
Article Open Source Digital Sovereignty

Open Code has no Nationality.

Europe just unveiled its long-delayed tech sovereignty package. Even a big tech lobbyist found opposing it dispiriting. The real fight now is between two kinds of sovereignty: the kind that builds walls, and the kind you can read, run, and trust.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
Your Data has a Nationality.
Article Open Source Digital Sovereignty

Your Data has a Nationality.

A Dutch 'sovereign' cloud almost became American overnight, and only a last-minute government veto stopped it. Real digital sovereignty was never just about where your data sits. It is about whose courts can reach it, and Europe's billion-euro plan still misses the point.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
Free to Use. Not Free to Maintain.
Article Open Source Digital Sovereignty

Free to Use. Not Free to Maintain.

96% of commercial software depends on open source. The value it creates: $8.8 trillion. A third of the developers maintaining it are unpaid. A practical framework of six shifts to move from extracting value to sustaining the ecosystem your organization depends on.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
Open Source is not a gift. It is a contract.
Article Open Source Digital Sovereignty

Open Source is not a gift. It is a contract.

Google is shutting down Gemini CLI and replacing it with a closed-source tool. 100,000 stars, 6,000 contributions, hundreds of volunteers. Enterprise customers keep access. The community that built it gets 30 days. When the value lives in a proprietary API, even forking cannot save you.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
The Digital Sovereignty Playbook
Article Digital Sovereignty Open Source

The Digital Sovereignty Playbook

Digital sovereignty projects don't fail because of the technology. They fail because someone swapped the software without rebuilding what it sits on. A four-layer framework drawn from Denmark, France, Germany, and Spain shows why the sequence matters more than the stack.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 8 min read
The AI models you are not using.
Article Digital Sovereignty Open Source

The AI models you are not using.

Most people stick with one AI provider because trying alternatives is friction. OpenCode Go changes that: one interface, any model. DeepSeek V4 Pro and Kimi K2.6 are delivering results that required premium subscriptions a year ago. The barrier to exploring is gone.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
Public money, private code.
Article Digital Sovereignty Open Source

Public money, private code.

The NHS survived hostile state attacks on its open-source pandemic app with zero critical breaches. Now it ordered every team to hide their public code in one week. AI was the justification, not the reason. When a taxpayer-funded health system abandons transparency, that's a democratic decision.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
The builders are leaving the building.
Article Digital Sovereignty Open Source

The builders are leaving the building.

Almost 90% of the world's software supply chain relies on a single platform. Microsoft folded GitHub into its AI division. The engineers who built on it are walking out, and open source is going sovereign.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
The AI Rental Trap.
Article Digital Sovereignty Open Source

The AI Rental Trap.

Anthropic pulled Claude Code from its $20 plan and reversed course within days, but the signal matters more than the reversal. Every major AI tool is sold below cost. When subsidies end, every workflow built on rented AI becomes a cost you didn't budget for or a capability you lose overnight.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
Open Source is closing its doors.
Article Digital Sovereignty Open Source

Open Source is closing its doors.

AI didn't break the code; it broke the economics. Hallucinated bug reports, spam pull requests, and a verification tax are overwhelming unpaid maintainers. Projects are closing their gates. If your stack depends on open source, upstream project health is now a board-level concern.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
France’s next Revolution.
Article Digital Sovereignty Open Source

France’s next Revolution.

France ordered every ministry to submit a Microsoft transition plan by autumn 2026, while Education just signed a €152M contract through 2029. The obstacle isn't political will. It's twenty years of legacy software nobody budgeted to rewrite.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
From encrypted email to a full open-source workspace.
Article Digital Sovereignty Open Source

From encrypted email to a full open-source workspace.

Scientists from CERN built an encrypted email service in 2014. Twelve years later, Proton is a full open-source workspace (every app audited, every byte encrypted), taking on Google and Microsoft at 100 million users.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
An award-winning government AI tool:  now open source.
Article Digital Sovereignty Open Source

An award-winning government AI tool: now open source.

Germany built an AI tool for planning approvals, won 'Best AI Use in Government Services' at the World Government Summit, and published the full codebase under Apache 2.0. Public Money, Public Code: in practice.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 2 min read
New Tool: Digital Sovereignty Self-Assessment
Update Digital Sovereignty

New Tool: Digital Sovereignty Self-Assessment

How dependent is your organization on technology you don't control? Use our free self-assessment tool based on the EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework to measure your maturity across 8 key dimensions.

Kai A. Hartung
Kai A. Hartung
· 1 min read