René Goscinny’s beloved comic series, Asterix, tells of a struggle between the titular Gaul and his rotund friend, Obelix, on one side and the mighty Roman Empire on the other. In the story, Armorica, the tiny, enchanted village from which the two heroes hail, is the last holdout against the Romans. Despite his best efforts, even the wily Julius Caesar is unable to bring the settlement under heel.
The open-source community loves an underdog tale, but this one in particular resonates with Frank Karlitschek, the founder and CEO of Nextcloud, a self-hosted, open-source alternative to collaboration software from Google or Microsoft. Kartlitschek sees his firm as Asterix and Obelix, and the big tech companies, naturally, as the all-conquering Roman Empire. Among their scuffles so far, Nextcloud has filed antitrust complaints against Microsoft, and Karlitschek has publicly accused Google of blocking his platform’s core functionalities on Android devices.
This month, Nextcloud, for the second straight year, held its annual conference: the Nextcloud Summit. Unusual for an event hosted by a small software company, the gathering drew attendees from think-tanks, NGOs and political organisations, in addition to technologists.
Open source: out from the ‘basement’ and into world politics
According to Karlitschek, the event’s popularity is down to the “open-source nerds” who have crawled out of their basement coding caves and entered the global political stage. Those aren’t words of disparagement – they’re autobiographical. Karlitschek spent much of his youth tinkering with computers before eventually transforming his hobby into a business.
Five big companies were controlling all the data and communication in the world
“I’ve been writing software since I was 12 years old,” he says. “I really liked the creativity but also the power. If you’re interested in cars or planes, well, you can’t build them. But with software, you can. That’s something I always found interesting.”
After completing his studies in computer science, Karlitschek began his professional life as a system administrator and developer, and later moved into sales and management roles. Meanwhile, he created a social network for open-source coders as a hobby. Then, in the Web 2.0 era, he quit his job to turn his pet project into a business with OwnCloud. He left the company several years later and founded Nextcloud.
At that time, Silicon Valley did not hold as much power as it does today, but “you could already see that five big companies were controlling all the data and communication in the world,” Karlitschek says. “I didn’t know exactly what would happen, but my gut feeling was that this immense centralisation needed a counter option.”
Europe opens its eyes to data ownership
With its self-hosted, privacy-focused alternatives to Microsoft Teams, Nextcloud has positioned itself as an ally in Europe’s growing ‘digital sovereignty’ crusade.
Although the movement has been brewing for several years, it has recently been helped along by an antagonistic Trump administration. Whether it was the threat to annex Greenland or the deeply unpopular and insulting Munich speech delivered by JD Vance, the US vice-president, European countries are finally waking up to the importance of controlling their technology infrastructure.
Maybe we can liberate some people
In response, the hyperscalers are introducing their own (supposedly) digitally sovereign clouds for European customers. But Karlitschek notes that, unlike the hyperscalers, Nextcloud is not beholden to the US Cloud Act, which requires US cloud providers to surrender their customer data to the country’s intelligence agencies if they demand it.
The US government has long exploited its technological supremacy to surveil and, at times, disrupt its enemies, its allies and its own. But European customers are becoming more interested in platforms such as Nextcloud thanks to a spate of recent outrages.
Take the digital blockade of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, for instance. In February, the US sanctioned the ICC and its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, in response to arrest warrants issued against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as its former defence minister. Khan subsequently lost access to his bank accounts and Microsoft email account, and many third parties grew reluctant to work with the ICC out of fear of US retaliation. In this case, Washington was able to disrupt the work of an international legal tribunal because of the organisation’s dependence on US IT services.
“A lot of people, especially in the private sector, think these dangers are not real,” says Karlitschek, but the incident at the ICC, and others like it, are making these risks more concrete.
Disruptors for digital sovereignty
In the UK, efforts to achieve digital sovereignty are at a very early stage. Much of the country runs on Microsoft Teams. But the past few years have proved that political sands can shift quickly.
Yet Karlitschek is candid about the challenges of taking on industry titans such as Microsoft and Google. “You need to be a little bit crazy and also a little bit naive” to believe a small organisation can take on big tech, he says. “This is how it’s always been if you’re a small startup that wants to disrupt the bigger players.”
So can the Asterix and Obelixes of this world really overthrow the proverbial Roman Empire? “I’m not sure,” says Karlitschek. “But maybe we can liberate some people.”
René Goscinny’s beloved comic series, Asterix, tells of a struggle between the titular Gaul and his rotund friend, Obelix, on one side and the mighty Roman Empire on the other. In the story, Armorica, the tiny, enchanted village from which the two heroes hail, is the last holdout against the Romans. Despite his best efforts, even the wily Julius Caesar is unable to bring the settlement under heel.
The open-source community loves an underdog tale, but this one in particular resonates with Frank Karlitschek, the founder and CEO of Nextcloud, a self-hosted, open-source alternative to collaboration software from Google or Microsoft. Kartlitschek sees his firm as Asterix and Obelix, and the big tech companies, naturally, as the all-conquering Roman Empire. Among their scuffles so far, Nextcloud has filed antitrust complaints against Microsoft, and Karlitschek has publicly accused Google of blocking his platform's core functionalities on Android devices.
This month, Nextcloud, for the second straight year, held its annual conference: the Nextcloud Summit. Unusual for an event hosted by a small software company, the gathering drew attendees from think-tanks, NGOs and political organisations, in addition to technologists.
