What is software sovereignty

Software sovereignty is a subset of digital sovereignty. In essence, digital sovereignty means controlling your data, hardware and software. In Europe digital sovereignty has been driven by the EU. The reason is the reliance on services from big, global US-led vendors such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google. This poses a risk to the EU, just as does reliance on Chinese manufacturing is similarly a risk.

These worries are compounded by the threats to democracy posed by rise of authoritarianism (e.g Russia and China) and other threats to democracy, such as Trump’s rise to power and the MAGA movement in the US, and the rise of far-right nationalistic parties in various European countries. Without digital sovereignty in general, or software sovereignty in particular, somebody could “pull the plug” and you would loose access to your own data, hardware and software. Moreover, if you do not control your data, hardware and software, you’re capability to innovate is severely hindered.