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Taking Back Control: A Practical Introduction to Libre Software and Digital Sovereignty


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A Practical Introduction to Libre Software and Digital Sovereignty

Closed software keeps code secret and locks you in; "open source" often lets corporations exploit your contributions; libre software guarantees your freedom to use, study, modify, and share. This article explains why controlling your own digital infrastructure matters for democracy, security, and innovation.

Our life on silicon

— Why it matters ? Who controls the infrastructure, software and data have absolute control over people. That is not a metaphor and those in power know it.

Your alarm, your news, your commute, your money, your doctor, your vote — all of it runs on software, on silicon, on data collected about you every second of every day.

This is not metaphor. Governments administer citizens through software. Hospitals keep people alive through software. Banks move wealth through software. Power grids, water supplies, courts, schools — the entire skeleton of modern society is code running on machines. And your personal life is no different: how you meet people, find work, learn, organise, remember, and are judged — all of it happens inside digital systems built and controlled by others.

Software is not a tool we pick up and put down. It is the infrastructure of life itself.

Infrastructure has always had owners. What is new is the scale and intimacy of this ownership. Whoever controls the software controls what it does, what it sees, what it shares, and what it denies. They set the rules — not parliaments, not courts, not you.

Technology is neither good nor bad. But it is never neutral. The question that matters is not whether software shapes our lives — it does, profoundly and inescapably — but who controls it, and in whose interest.

Why licenses matter

Every piece of software — the app on your phone, the system running your online shop, the tool managing your emails — comes with a set of rules about who controls it and what you're allowed to do with it. Those rules fall into three broad categories.

Closed (proprietary) software: is like renting a car you're never allowed to open the bonnet of. The company that made it decides everything: what it does, how long it works, what it costs, and who it talks to. You pay to use it, but you never truly own it. They can raise prices, shut it down, read your data, or simply stop supporting it — and your only option is to comply or scramble for an alternative. Most of the big-name business tools you've heard of — from Microsoft Office to Salesforce to Shopify — work this way.
Open source software: lets you see the recipe, but that's often where the freedom stops. You can read the code, and sometimes copy it, but the project might still be controlled by a single corporation that can change the rules whenever it suits them. "Open source" has become a marketing term as much as a philosophy. Seeing the ingredients doesn't mean you own the kitchen.
Libre (free/freedom) software: is different in kind, not just degree. "Libre" comes from the Spanish and French word for freedom — and that's exactly what it guarantees. You have the right to use it for any purpose, study how it works, change it to suit your needs, and share your changes with others. No single company owns it. No one can take those rights away. The software belongs, in a genuine sense, to everyone who uses it. See the licenses and organisations that protect these rights →

Own your infrastructure

Imagine building your business on land you don't own. The landlord can raise the rent, add new rules, or sell the plot from under you at any time. Now imagine the same situation but with your software, your customer data, your online shop, your communications.

That is the reality for most businesses today.

When you run your operations on closed or corporate-controlled platforms, you are not a customer — you are a dependency. Your data lives on their servers. Your workflows are shaped by their roadmap. Your costs are set by their pricing team. And if they decide your business model is inconvenient, or they get acquired, or they simply raise prices because they can — you have no leverage.

Owning your infrastructure means:

Your data stays yours. It's stored on hardware you control, under laws you understand, accessible only to people you authorise.
No one can switch you off. You are not subject to a company's terms of service, their political decisions, or their quarterly earnings targets.
Your costs are predictable. You pay for servers and support — not for the privilege of using software that someone else can reprice tomorrow.
You can adapt. If your needs change, you change the software — or find someone to change it for you.

This isn't paranoia. It's the same reason serious businesses own their premises rather than always renting, keep their own financial records rather than handing everything to one accountant, and don't let a single supplier control their entire supply chain. See how to build your own sovereign infrastructure →

Democracy and the commons

Control over software is control over communication, commerce, and increasingly, public life. When a handful of corporations own the platforms through which we shop, organise, speak, and vote, they hold power that no elected body granted them and no law adequately checks.

Libre software is one of the few serious answers to this. It creates a digital commons — infrastructure that belongs to everyone and can be taken from no one. It means a small business in rural Portugal has access to the same quality tools as a corporation in Silicon Valley. It means activists, journalists, and ordinary people can communicate and organise without their tools being weaponised against them.

Supporting libre software is, in a quiet but meaningful way, an act of democratic participation. See the tools and organisations building democratic digital infrastructure →

The shared benefit model

Here's where libre software becomes genuinely remarkable — and different from almost everything else in the economy.

When you commission an improvement to a libre software tool — a new feature for an e-commerce system, a security fix, a better integration — that improvement doesn't belong only to you. Because the software is libre, the improvement goes back into the common pool. Every other business using that same system benefits from your investment, without paying for it again.

And the reverse is equally true: every improvement that others have commissioned or contributed is available to you, free of charge.

This is sometimes called a commons model, and it has a powerful economic logic:

A problem that costs one business €5,000 to solve costs a hundred businesses sharing the same software €50 each — or nothing, if someone else has already solved it.
Quality compounds. Each contribution makes the software better for everyone, which attracts more users, which means more eyes finding bugs, more developers contributing fixes, more businesses investing in improvements.
No one captures the value entirely. Unlike a proprietary product where the vendor profits from every sale of every improvement, the benefit is distributed across the whole community.

When you support a project like this — financially, with feedback, or simply by using and recommending the tools — you are investing in infrastructure that serves everyone who depends on it. You are the patron of a digital commons. See the libre business tools that make this possible.

What this project is

This project exists to make libre, self-hosted software genuinely usable for real businesses and real people — not just for those with deep technical expertise.

The tools we work with are carefully chosen: battle-tested, community-governed, and built on principles of freedom rather than extraction. We configure them, polish them, document them, and support them — so that you can own your infrastructure without needing to become a systems administrator.

This runs on a shared unix system ? — a tilde — where your account gives access to the full stack: email, chat, project management, knowledge base, forum, and e-commerce. Independent people, similar problems. Two shop owners don't share a business, but they share questions about payment processors, shipping, and the law. Here those questions get answered once, in a shared knowledge base, and everyone benefits — while each person runs their own independent operation.

Every improvement made here — to an e-commerce setup, an email system, a collaboration platform — is shared openly. If your business funds a better solution today, other businesses benefit tomorrow. And when others do the same, you benefit in turn.

This is how libre software has always worked at its best. We think it's a model worth building on. Find out what's available and how to get involved.