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Reading in Servo’s latest weekly report that it’s now passing 1.7 million Web Platform Subtests, I started wondering: How much investment would it build it into a competitive, independent browser, in the context of all this talk on digital sovereignty?
Servo is an experimental web browser engine written in Rust, originally developed by Mozilla Research as a memory-safe, parallel alternative to traditional browser engines like Gecko and WebKit. After Mozilla laid off the entire Servo team in 2020, the project was transferred to Linux Foundation Europe, where it continues to be developed with minimal funding from individual donors and Igalia, a team of just five engineers. Servo’s progress demonstrates what’s possible with intentional investment in independent browser projects.
As initiatives like EuroStack propose €300 billion investments in digital infrastructure and researchers proposing comprehensive roadmaps for “reclaiming digital sovereignty” through democratic, public-led digital stacks, browsers are an ideal test case to ground these ambitious visions in reality.
The current browser landscape reveals how concentrated digital control has become. Roughly 75% of global web traffic flows through browsers based on Google’s Chromium engine; not just Chrome, but Microsoft Edge, Samsung, and dozens of others. Apple’s Safari dominates iOS but remains locked to their ecosystem. Firefox, once a genuine alternative, has declined to under 5% market share globally. This means American companies control how billions of users worldwide access the web. Every search, transaction, and digital service flows through infrastructure ultimately controlled by Silicon Valley. For societies valuing their independence and sovereignty, this represents a fundamental vulnerability that recent geopolitical events have made impossible to ignore.
Digital infrastructure is as important as energy or transportation networks. Unlike physical infrastructure, however, digital systems can be controlled remotely, updated unilaterally, and modified to serve the interests of their controllers rather than their users. Browsers exemplify this challenge because they’re both critical and seemingly replaceable. In theory, anyone can build a browser. The web standards are open, and rendering engines like Servo prove it’s technically feasible.
In practice, building browsers requires sustained investment, institutional coordination, and overcoming network effects that entrench existing players. If democratic societies can successfully coordinate to build and maintain competitive browser alternatives, it demonstrates their capacity for more complex digital sovereignty goals. If they cannot, it reveals the institutional gaps that need addressing.
Firefox offers important lessons about the challenges facing independent browsers. Mozilla has indeed faced difficulties: declining market share, organizational challenges, and ongoing technical issues. The organization has also alienated its most dedicated supporters by pivoting toward advertising, AI initiatives and cutting their impactful public advocacy programs.
However, Firefox remains the only major browser engine not controlled by Apple or Google, serving hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Its struggles reflect structural challenges that any alternative browser would face: the enormous engineering effort required to maintain web compatibility, the network effects favouring dominant platforms, and the difficulty of sustaining long-term technical projects through diverse funding sources.
Servo’s recent progress illustrates both the potential and the resource constraints of independent browser development. Since 2023, Igalia’s team of just five engineers has increased Servo’s Web Platform Test pass rate from 40.8% to 62.0%, added Android support, and made the engine embeddable in other applications, even demonstrating better performance than Chromium on Raspberry Pi. This progress on a shoestring budget shows what focused investment could achieve, while also highlighting how resource-constrained independent browser development remains.
Yet, building a competitive alternative browser infrastructure would require substantial but manageable investment. Here is a ballpark estimation I made based on existing browsers: Annual operating costs would include:
At this point I would just round up to around 50-70 million annually, which I’m sure would comfortably cover everything I missed. The proposed EuroStack initiative already envisions €300 billion over multiple years. Browsers represent a tiny fraction of what democratic societies already spend on strategic infrastructure. This calculation proves that the cost isn’t the primary barrier: the European Space Agency for example has had a budget of €7.8 billion in 2024. Europe can afford to build a browser.
It would probably take around 3-4 years to fully build an alternative browser from scratch, less so if it’s a fork of one of the existing ones. Forking Chromium/Gecko or building upon Servo’s foundation could reduce this timeline to 18-24 months for basic functionality, though achieving full web compatibility and market readiness would still require several additional years of refinement. The initial development sprint needs to be followed by a sustained engineering effort needed afterward, for maintaining compatibility with evolving web standards, fixing security vulnerabilities, and keeping pace with performance improvements.
The core challenge isn’t technical; it’s institutional. How do you sustain long-term technical projects through democratic processes that span multiple countries with different priorities, resources, and political systems? Successful models exist. The European Space Agency coordinates complex multi-national technical projects. CERN manages cutting-edge research infrastructure across dozens of countries. The Internet Engineering Task Force maintains critical internet standards through voluntary coordination among global stakeholders. The “Reclaiming Digital Sovereignity” proposal specifically addresses this challenge by advocating for “new public institutions with state and civil society representation” to govern universal digital platforms, alongside “multilateral agreements on principles and rules for the internet” as safeguards for autonomous, democratically governed solutions.
Browser development could follow similar patterns: international frameworks that respect national sovereignty while enabling coordinated action, governance structures that balance technical expertise with democratic accountability, and funding mechanisms that provide stability across political cycles. The Reclaiming Digital Sovereignity’s report’s emphasis on “democratic international consortia” and “public knowledge networks led by a new public international research agency” provides concrete institutional models that could be adapted for browser development. Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency represents another model for public investment in digital infrastructure for the public interest.
With all that being said, browsers represent one of the more achievable digital sovereignty goals. They’re built on open standards, rely heavily on open source components, and face fewer network effects than platform-based services. Other areas of the technology stack would be far more challenging, and far less open.
Success here would demonstrate that democratic societies can coordinate effectively on complex technical infrastructure and pass the first hurdle. Failure would reveal institutional gaps that need addressing before attempting more ambitious digital sovereignty goals. Democratic digital sovereignty is challenging but feasible, if societies are willing to think institutionally, invest sustainably, and build incrementally rather than trying to recreate Silicon Valley with different ownership structures.
Ultimately, the real question isn’t whether democratic societies can build alternative technologies, but whether they can build the democratic institutions necessary to govern them effectively across the complex realities of international coordination, competing priorities, and long-term sustainability. I believe browsers offer an ideal place to start testing these institutional innovations. The technical challenges are surmountable. The institutional ones remain to be proven.
Views expressed are personal and do not represent any organization.
#digitalSovereignity #funding #internetStandards #openSource #publicInterest
The European Space Agency budget will increase this year by 10% to €7.8B ($8.5B), the agency announced at its annual press briefing yesterday.Jack Kuhr (Payload)
Oh, wow! The German IT Planning Council decided yesterday to consolidate a bunch of disparate communication tools into a unified system based on Matrix and MLS.
Here's the record of their decision and the other options they considered: gitlab.opencode.de/it-planungs…
#Matrix #OpenSource #FOSS #ProtocolsNotPlatforms #DPI #DPG
Informationen zur Umsetzung von Beschluss 2024/28 des IT-Planungsrates.GitLab
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🌤️ Oscloud je komunitní server pro každého, kdo hledá svobodné a jednoduché řešení svých online potřeb – bez reklam a bez korporací.
Od e-mailu přes sdílení souborů až po video, poznámky, týmovou spolupráci a jednoduše spravovaný webhosting.
Vše postaveno na open-source technologiích, které respektují vaše soukromí.
Oscloud je váš bezpečný cloud.
Naším cílem je ukázat lidem výhody svobodného internetu a otevřených řešení.
Nabízíme hosting a správu aplikací, které nahrazují komerční služby – bezpečněji, transparentněji a s důvěrou.
Oscloud je určen pro jednotlivce, týmy i komunity, které chtějí mít svá data pod kontrolou.
👇 Pokračuj ve vláknu
#oscloud #oscloudcz #opensource
We take it for granted how lucky we are to have #opensource software.
It really is magical because not only the source code is publicly available, it's free.
Please, do your part. donate 💰
@davx5app is a good example.
Grab your chance to talk to us! 🤩
🗓️ Join our AMA on r/BuyFromEU
📅 June 26, 5 PM CEST | 11 AM EST
💬 Ask us anything: tech, privacy, business model, AI, digital sovereignty, anything!
👉 reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comment…
#PrivacyMatters #OpenSource #Encryption #PostQuantum
#Firefox Progressive Web Apps sind ne praktische Sache.
Allerdings finde ich die #Installation auf #ubuntu etwas unübersichtlich. Deshalb diese Notiz an meiner Pinnwand mit dem #Workflow, der sich für mich bewährt hat. Vielleicht hilft's auch anderen:
LibreOffice is a free private office suite backed by a non-profit (The Document Foundation)LibreOffice Merchandising Shop - The Document Foundation
We're looking for a creative web developer who is all in on #OpenSource!
We plan to build a website using an open source static site generator (your choice, as long as it sings), and need a #freelancer to help us bring our new brand identity and content to life across every screen.
Clean code, fast load times, beautiful design — that’s the goal.
Interested? Reach out for the details. Sharing is caring. 💚
United Nations Open Source Principles:
unite.un.org/news/osi-first-en…
The United Nations Open Source United community and the Open Source Initiative (OSI) today announced that the OSI has become the first organization to officially endorse the UN Open Source Principles.unite.un.org
The Open Document Format (ODF) is an open standard format for office documents, which offers a vendor-independent, royalty-free way to encode text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.Italo Vignoli (The Document Foundation)
Just listening to the speech of the @EUCommission's DG Connect Director Thibaut Kleiner, who celebrates #FOSS and the global ecosystem of #opensource developers as well as the #NGI programme but somehow his convictions seem to not be enough for the Commission to massively scale up investments in the #digitalcommons. What am I missing? 🤔
#FreeBSD provides the Ports Collection, a convenient way to install applications. Some ports allow users to configure options before building and installing. By default, this configuration is done through an interactive menu in the terminal.
To improve readability and #Accessibility especially for users with low vision or color blindness, it's important to offer simple and customizable color options. These features have recently been implemented and documented in the preview version of the FreeBSD Accessibility Handbook:
freebsd-accessibility-9d667f.g…
The next step is to extend these features to all terminal-based graphical components.
I'd love to hear from you:
Do you use any accessibility features in the terminal?
Which color-related assistive technologies make the biggest difference in your daily workflow?
Together, we can make FreeBSD more accessible for everyone. #ThePowerForEveryone #FreeBSD #Accessibility #OpenSource #LowVision #ColorBlindness #AssistiveTechnology #AccessibilityMatters
Features to set up colorsfreebsd-accessibility-9d667f.gitlab.io
“The reality is also that money doesn’t solve all problems, unfortunately. It can create wrong incentives, it can increase stress and pressure, it can rip communities apart, it can do good in the short term but harm in the long term. We need to take all of these factors into account, if we want to channel support into our shared digital infrastructure, into #OpenSource communities.”
6/ #UNOpenSourceWeek
Does it make sense to compare #OpenSource to water utilities? Is a metaphor folks will understand? Is physical infrastructure like bridges better? Governments generally find $$ to repair the physical infrastructure they are responsible for, why is digital different?
Da gibt es die Initiative
stifter-helfen.de/
Sie vermitteln vor allem #Software #Lizenzen an #NGO's oder gemeinnützige Vereine zu Sonderkonditionen.
Sooft ich mich dort in den letzten Jahren für einen Verein informiert hatte, begegneten mir hauptsächlich Angebote für #Microsoft-Produkte.
Nun war ich auch mal beruflich in einem gemeinnützigen Unternehmen beschäftigt, welches solche Sonderlizenzen direkt von Microsoft in Anspruch nahm. Das ging ne Weile gut, bis Microsoft die Regeln änderte...
Das ist ein Grund, weshalb ich es als Vereinsvorstand ablehne, auf solche Sonderangebote einzugehen.
Nun hat stifter-helfen grad nachgefragt, warum unser Verein denn die Dienste nicht nutzen würde. Auf der Webseite heißt es, es wären über 90.000 Organisationen in ihren Datenbanken....
Eine Frage im Antwortformular lautet:
Was müsste sich ändern, damit Stifter-helfen wieder interessant für Ihre Organisation wird?
Da habe ich folgendes eingetragen:
Gemeinwohlorientierte, datenschutzmäßig unumstrittene OpenSource Software offerieren, die der Richtlinie Public Money - Public Code entspricht.
Ich gehe davon aus, dass unser #Verein nicht der Einzige ist, bei dem nachgefragt wird 😎
publiccode.eu/de/
#PublicMoneyPublicCode #Förderung #Gemeinnützigkeit #digitaleGesellschaft #OpenSource
Public Money, Public Code - Eine Kampagne, damit öffentlich finanzierte Software als Freie Software veröffentlicht wirdpubliccode.eu
What have #OSPOs done to change the culture within the organization? How can long-term investments & maintenannce fit into this? How do you invest in the public sector & the private companies which support the software?
Important questions from #UNOpenSourceWeek #OpenSourceWeek #FOSS #OpenSource
Exciting day for the #Fediverse! This morning at #UN #OpenSource Week, @haubles announced that @Mastodon has been named as a Digital Public Good for its work to empower communities, protect privacy, and foster authentic connections.
blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/06/…
#Mastodon #DPG #DigitalPublicGoods #UnitedNations #FreeSoftware #FOSS #FLOSS
Mastodon has been added to the Digital Public Goods Alliance's DPG Registry.Mastodon Blog
🌍📄 Docs, l’éditeur de texte libre et collaboratif de La Suite numérique, a été reconnu "bien public numérique" (Digital Public Good) par la Digital Public Goods Alliance ce matin à l’ONU lors de la semaine Open Source des Nations Unies.
🔗 digitalpublicgoods.net/r/docs-…
Ce label marque une étape importante pour cette solution issue du partenariat franco-allemand-néerlandais 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇳🇱
#LogicielsLibres #OpenSource #DigitalPublicGoods #ONU #Europe #Docs #SouverainetéNumérique
cc @numerique_gouv
Docs is a collaborative text editor designed to address common challenges in knowledge building and sharing.Docs - Collaborative Text Editing
🔐 "Fixing Desktop Keyrings"
with Dhanuka Warusadura at #GUADEC2025
📅 24 July 🕒 12:30 CEST 📍 Brescia
🧩 GNOME 49 plans to replace gnome-keyring with a new D-Bus Secret Service. Here’s what’s changing.
🔗 events.gnome.org/event/259/con…
#GNOME #Security #Keyring #OpenSource
Welcome to GUADEC 2025 GUADEC is the GNOME community’s largest conference, bringing together hundreds of users, contributors, community members, and enthusiastic supporters for a week of talks and workshops.GNOME Events (Indico)
🍜 "State of libsoup"
with Patrick Griffis at #GUADEC2025
📅 24 July 🕒 12:30 CEST 📍 Brescia
🔧 From 3.0 to what’s next—Patrick gives an update on GNOME’s HTTP library libsoup.
🔗 events.gnome.org/event/259/con…
#GNOME #libsoup #Networking #OpenSource
Welcome to GUADEC 2025 GUADEC is the GNOME community’s largest conference, bringing together hundreds of users, contributors, community members, and enthusiastic supporters for a week of talks and workshops.GNOME Events (Indico)
#EOSAcademy hosted a session on
#OpenSource Skills in the #AI Era – Perspectives from the European Open Source Academy at #UNOpenSourceWeek
The panel was moderated by @nicholas gates ( @OpenForumEurope ) with excellent insights from : David Cuartielles ( Malmo University), @Amandine ( @matrix ), Sachiko Muto (RISE, OpenForum Europe), Walid Mathlouthi ( International Telecommunication Union), Joshua Tan (Metagov).
Read more about the Academy: lnkd.in/eFG3ZQwk
LibreOffice is the successor project to OpenOffice(.org), which in turn was based on StarOffice, a proprietary office suite developed in the 1990s.Mike Saunders (The Document Foundation)
Over the course of its 20-year history, the ODF standard has been adopted, or at least recommended, by numerous supranational bodies and several countries on almost every continent.Italo Vignoli (The Document Foundation)
💬 Zkuste otevřený a bezpečný chat bez reklam a sledování.
MXChat.cz běží na Matrixu – otevřeném standardu pro komunikaci, kde máte kontrolu nad svými daty.
📱 Alternativa k WhatsAppu nebo Messengeru, ale bez šmírování a algoritmů.
🔐 Soukromí je základ, ne funkce navíc.
👥 Vhodné pro přátele, rodinu i komunitu.
✅ Snadné přihlášení přes Oscloud.
✅ Pravidené aktualizace
➡️ chat.mxchat.cz
➡️ web.mxchat.cz
Přidejte se – otevřená komunikace má smysl.
#mxchat #opensource
About the Open Source Accessibility Summit The Open Source Accessibility Summit will be a one-day in-person event that brings together members of the disability, accessibility, and open source communities to define a roadmap for improving the accessi…All Things Open
Marco Marega writes: Hi, I’m Marco, an Italian translator and Member of The Document Foundation. Twice a year I take part in an event in Pordenone to promote LibreOffice within the stand “Linux Arena” of the PNLUG Linux User Group.Mike Saunders (The Document Foundation)
🗓️ Planify mi bylo doporučeno v komunitní místnosti o #triliumnext – a musím říct, fakt super!
Konečně krásná co padne do #Gnome, jednoduchá a funkční aplikace pro správu úkolů, která se napojí na #Nextcloud #oscloud přes CalDAV.
Nextcloud (backend) + DAVx⁵ + Tasks.org (Android) + Planify (desktop)
Funguje to skvěle dohromady.
#FOSS #Planify #Nextcloud #CalDAV #Linux #OpenSource #oscloud
github.com/alainm23/planify
Task manager with Todoist & Nextcloud support designed for GNOME - alainm23/planifyGitHub
LibreOffice 25.8 will be released as final at the end of August, 2025 ( Check the Release Plan ) being LibreOffice 25.8 Beta1 the second pre-release since the development of version 25.8 started at the beginning of December, 2024.x1sc0 (LibreOffice QA Blog)
🌍 Accessibility matters for everyone.
Whether permanent or temporary, disability can affect us all at some point in our lives. That’s why accessibility isn’t a bonus feature: it’s a necessity.
At Jami, we’re committed to making private communication truly inclusive. From screen reader support to keyboard navigation, here’s where we stand and where we’re going: jami.net/how-accessible-is-jam…
#Accessibility #Inclusion #TechForGood #OpenSource #Jami #PrivacyMatters #AccessibilityMatters
We can all be faced with some form of disability, whether permanent or temporary, at different times in our lives. That's why accessibility must be a constant concern at every stage of development.jami (Jami)
What I see:
"Denmark Set to Replace #Microsoft Software with Open Source Alternatives
Denmark's Digital Ministry is replacing Microsoft services with LibreOffice and Linux."
What I read:
"Denmark is excluding screen reader users from opportunities to get a job at their public institutions".
to those who are happy about the #OpenSource move: you should never forget that there are lots of users, already vulnerable in our society, whose chance to get a decent job drastically lowers from already being quite low to asymptotically nearing zero.
I wonder however, what happens on June 28th this year when #EAA (European #Accessibility act) enters in vigor.
How would those who ditch #Microsoft and #Google products so hastily adhere to this law? Or will they just do as if accessibility legislation was not a thing?
Die Entwicklung der #PeerTube #App ist unterstützenswert:
support.joinpeertube.org/en/
#OpenSource #Video #FediVerse
Let's popularize videos shared by the people, for the people!support.joinpeertube.org
🗓️ There are 4 days left to contribute to the crowdfunding campaign for the #PeerTube mobile app and help us to reach the next goal!
Every contribution helps us build a world where everyone can use PeerTube from anywhere!
#crowdfunding #mobile #app #FLOSS #FOSS #FreeSoftware #OpenSource
Popularisons les vidéos partagées par les humain⋅es pour les humain⋅es !support.joinpeertube.org
Regina Henschel writes: Susanne Mohn asked on the German-language user’s mailing list how to create a colour wheel with LibreOffice. It was not about the colours themselves, but about the geometry.Mike Saunders (The Document Foundation)
In-Process is out, featuring the latest on NVDA 2025.1, the recent NV Access strategy session, and Should you use Screen Layout? (H/T to @jscholes for your recent poll)
Check it all out here: nvaccess.org/post/in-process-1…
#NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #Blog #News #newsletter #Software #PreRelease #FOSS #OpenSource
🎟️EXTRA TICKETS RELEASED🎟️
You’re incredible! Tickets for DevConf.CZ have officially sold out — but no need to panic! 🙌
We’ve just released a limited batch of EXTRA TICKETS for those who missed out.
👉Act now to avoid disappointment: devconf.info/cz/#registration
#opensource #DevConf_CZ #community #DefineFuture
DevConf are free and open, annual, open-source community conferences for community contibutors, sponsored by Red Hat.DevConf.CZ
The Document Foundation and LibreOffice support the international campaign @endof10 https://endof10.org/ The countdown has begun. On 14 October 2025, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10.Italo Vignoli (The Document Foundation)
🎓 "Making a career out of FOSS Internships (GSoC/Outreachy)"
with Aryan Kaushik at #GUADEC2025
📅 24 July 🕒 12:05 CEST 📍 Brescia
💼 FOSS can lead to real careers. Aryan explains how GSoC & Outreachy changed lives—and why you should get involved too.
🔗 events.gnome.org/event/259/con…
#OpenSource #GSoC #Outreachy #GNOME
Welcome to GUADEC 2025 GUADEC is the GNOME community’s largest conference, bringing together hundreds of users, contributors, community members, and enthusiastic supporters for a week of talks and workshops.GNOME Events (Indico)
The #XMPP Newsletter for May 2025 is out!
Read about the latest XMPP universe updates and updates on our #standards!
xmpp.org/2025/06/the-xmpp-news…
Enjoy reading! 📰 ☕ 
#jabber #chat #interoperability #rtc
#opensource #decentralization #federation
