Digital Sovereignty means owning and maintaining yourself the computer hardware and software on which you depend, instead of renting them from someone else.
For example, let’s say a man needed to write a humble word document, and decides to use a computer; at root, he has two paths, one the one hand, he can use Microsoft, Apple, or Google Docs, or he can be based and use LibreOffice. The resulting document is identical, the difference lies only in the means used to create it.
One path is ontologically better than the other! Better in the bones. And the principles apply far beyond creating basic documents.
Cost
Comparing the above paths, the most obvious and first consideration is cost; Microsoft, and Apple have basic office functionality which is free — with an asterisk. Both of them withold substantial features of their office suite on the “free tier” to push people onto an annual subscription for deeper capabilities.
LibreOffice does everything they do, but forever free.
“BUT WAIT!” I hear you say, “Google docs, is also free! So what’s the difference between the two?
Super glad you asked. I was getting there.
Privacy
While Google docs is mostly free1, Google, like many providers of proprietary free services, are in their bones, data companies. They make their money by tracking you as much as is legally possible (and beyond) and feeding your flesh to hungry advertisers. Indeed, both Apple and Microsoft have telemetry as well, but Microslop is the dirties Debbie of the neighborhood.
Everything you create with Google docs is known and sold in Google. You are a commodity to be monetized for your feudal-lords, as the price for your lack of bassed-ness.
For Privacy, many don’t care, until they care. Until Big Brother’s boots are on your porch, he’s peering at you while you tuck you kids in bed at night; until your baby monitor sold her live feed to the Vietnamese, until your passport and social saunter into some saucy dark-web databases, they will still say, “Sure officer! You can search my car, I am a stand-up citizen with nothing to hide.”
Dependency
Most thirdly, the difference between LibreOffice and any of the other providers: dependency.
Imagine, if you will, that your child has a rash, and so you take a picture, put it on your Google Drive, and send it to your doctor. Google’s AI bots, which constantly scan your drive, detect this, and mark your account as violating their community standards, having pictures of exposed children: you pervert.
Google’s AI bots do the reasonable thing of course, and lock you out of your Google account, block your internet, and report you to the police. So much for your docs! Lets not forget, your passwords, email, and years of unorganized file storage; also your ad account etc. We need not imagine too hard here, because it happened.2
The more you build your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness upon the provision of techno-oligarchs, the more you are at their mercy.
Back to our example, I now hear you say, “With LibreOffice I am still dependent on the original developers to have made the code!”
Yes my child, you are dependent on them to have written the code, just as you depend on Pacific Gas for the electricity to turn on your computer, AT&T for the internet to download the code, the sun for its light and the Lord for your daily bread. Who is truly independent? But that’s not the issue, dear child.
The difference between LibreOffice and the others is that once that code is on your machine, the provider can’t/won’t ever turn it off or hold it for ransom. They will never ask you for an upgrade, and push you onto their premium-plus-extra-premium-feature-teir-plus-model. Even if they tried and restricted future releases to a different software license, you still have the old code; known code, which you can pass down to your children’s children. To do what you want with what is yours!
Beyond our Example
Documents, CRM, accounting software, automation software, websites, cloud storage, video editing, AI models:
You can rent it all from companies who meet every quarter and scheme upon how they can make you more dependent on their provision. Forever. Or you can learn how to run the things you own. The choice between slavery and freedom. One is convenient, and the other is how Man was created to rule the earth.