While 2024 may not have been an exciting year for open source, the future looks bright and European.
Kangaroot, a Belgian company supporting open source organizations, kicks off its annual open source meeting Open’25 with a clear geopolitical message: in a world increasingly dependent on American tech giants, European infrastructure is a necessity.
In his keynote, Peter Dens, Managing Director of Kangaroot, not only looks back on years of experience but primarily looks ahead. He believes that companies should be in control again. ‘We’re no longer a young start-up, I’ve lost my hair along the way,’ he jokes, ‘but we bring 25 years of open source experience with us.’
This experience translates into a clear mission: helping companies maintain freedom when vendors prefer both lock-in and AI, while also dealing with growing security risks.
Look Local
‘Why did we start with open source back then? Because we wanted to be independent. We wanted to be able to choose for ourselves, and if something didn’t suit us, we could simply say: we’ll change,’ Dens continues. This still applies, but now in a different context: (cloud) infrastructure instead of software. ‘Don’t let yourself be locked into one cloud provider. If you bet on one horse, and it doesn’t do exactly what you want, you have a problem.’
Kangaroot advises clients to look at European cloud and AI providers. Not out of an anti-American reflex, but out of common sense. ‘We’re not saying: flee from AWS or Google. But think it through. Build your systems in such a way that you can move if necessary.’
KangaSec for Open Source Security
The biggest announcement of the day is the establishment of KangaSec, a new division fully focused on open source security solutions for the Belgian and Dutch market.
‘Security has been important for years, but today it’s essential,’ Dens states. ‘What bothers me is that as soon as you enter the security world, you always end up with American or Israeli companies. And they often just use open source under the hood, only they pretend it’s magic. Europe has insufficient security services of its own and relies too heavily on foreign technology.’ KangaSec wants to approach this differently: transparently, locally, and fully built on open source tools with technology that clients can understand and manage themselves.
He also emphasizes the practical reason: ‘In recent years, we’ve often had to clean up the mess after major hacks, because the hired external parties knew little about Linux or open source environments. Then they end up calling us anyway.’
The Common Thread: Freedom of Choice
The common thread of the event is clear: ‘Technological independence is more important today than ever. You don’t have to build everything yourself, but you do need to keep the reins in your hands.’
Peter Dens summarizes it with a nod to the past: ‘It’s still about freedom. Only the challenges have changed. In the past, it was: do you take your software from Microsoft or choose something else? Today it’s: do you leave your data and AI to an American cloud provider, or do you want to be in the driver’s seat yourself?’