Charles-H. Schulz

Open Source virtualization is sometimes perceived as being out of date. But cloud platforms as well as large scale deployments of containers ultimately rely on hypervisors and virtual machines to deliver both portability and abstraction from the bare metal. As such the conversation may have switched to containers, but it does not mean that virtualization has become irrelevant. Several initiatives highlight that it is quite the opposite, and the XCP-ng project has started to take advantage of the latest development effort to deliver isolation of containers and their runtimes.

We often talk about the need to regulate the use of data, to improve public procurement to ensure FOSS gets used and developed (public money, public code), and how to better regulate major social networks and cloud service providers in order to protect the ownership and control of our data (personal or even just sensitive data), in order to ensure and safeguard our digital freedom. While this is indeed important in its own right, we often overlook the need to nurture viable and strong ecosystems of FOSS software and solutions. Such a need is tightly related with adequate regulation and acceptance of FOSS across public and private sector. If there’s a strong enough ecosystem of strategic IT infrastructure and other critical software stacks in Europe, we will be able to improve both our collective ability to choose and remain digitally free and sovereign, as individuals, collective entities and countries. Specific cases will be discussed: virtualization through XCP-ng, the Gaia-X initiative, but also email clients and office suites.