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Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

This the English version of this Dutch piece. Now that we’re increasingly concerned about the dominance of ‘big tech’, Open Source is often mentioned as an alternative, especially now that it seems our governments are carrying out a Total Migration to Microsoft. In Dutch we say you can’t compare apples and pears, but that’s not entirely true. Both are so-called handfruit, one a bit harder, the other a bit softer.

A while ago, there was an idealistic faction in the European Parliament, and they decided they had had enough of big tech, and conducted an experiment with Nextcloud as a replacement. Yet, there’s another company that offers cloud storage, file management, spreadsheets, word processing, email, and everything in between with their own software: Apple. But if we want to give alternatives to “big tech” a chance, then we’ll have to invest comparable amounts of effort and significant money as well.

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