Communication software, particularly video and collaboration platforms, has become a political topic in Europe.
France is advancing nationally hosted alternatives. The Netherlands and Germany are pushing public-sector initiatives centered on open source. Governments are rethinking the tools that support their most sensitive conversations.
It’s tempting to frame this as a simple choice: open source or proprietary. But the more important question is whether you are looking at the whole collaboration environment and being clear about where responsibility actually sits.
At Pexip, we build on open source ourselves. Technologies like the Linux kernel and GStreamer sit at the foundation of our platform, and our engineers actively contribute back to the communities we rely on. Open source is part of how modern software is built, including ours.
Open-source projects often deliver truly excellent components. They provide flexibility and give organizations freedom to adapt and deploy as they see fit. But components do not automatically form a reliable system.
Integration, coordinated upgrades, identity governance, lifecycle management, compliance alignment – these do not disappear because the code is open. They are either handled internally by the organization adopting the solution or taken on by a vendor who accepts contractual responsibility for the whole. Open-source increases freedom and control, while commercial offerings take on more of the complexity, risk, and accountability. That introduces an operational burden that needs to be understood and accepted.
The real decision is not ideological. It’s about who carries the responsibility.
Many open-source initiatives are built to demonstrate early success. Proof-of-concepts can look convincing, initial deployment is achievable, while the real effort often comes later on.
Upgrades, configuration drift, patch coordination, incident response, and risk of knowledge becoming concentrated among a few individuals build over time, especially as change requirements and complexity grow. Much of the cost and risk only appear once the system is live. If you have the internal skills and long-term mandate to operate such a platform, open source can absolutely work.
But if your mission is delivering justice, coordinating defense, or running a national healthcare service, it is worth asking whether operating a video communications stack should be your primary responsibility.
Transparency matters and being able to inspect code is valuable. However, security at scale requires coordinated fixes and continuous compliance work. Individual components may be secure on their own, but when assembled into larger systems, complexity increases along with the attack surface.
The same applies to interoperability. Standards help systems connect. But keeping government video environments working smoothly across agencies, security levels, and partners requires ongoing ownership at system-level. Someone has to carry that weight.
As European governments raise expectations around sovereignty and control, credibility depends on applying the same level of rigor to the full system, not just to individual components or infrastructure.
Before committing to any approach for your video collaboration environment, pause and ask:
I want to be clear. Open source and proprietary software differ in governance models, not inherent levels of security or sovereignty – one approach is no more or less secure than the other. Security and sovereignty are the outcomes of architecture, operational control, and long-term stewardship. This is particularly true when it comes to systems that underpin essential public sector communications.
Across Europe, governments are asking how to regain control and reduce dependency. That conversation is important. But sovereignty is not achieved by simply selecting a license model or assembling a set of tools. It is defined by who takes responsibility for keeping mission-critical communication secure and operational, year after year.
Before choosing any path, it is worth asking yourself one more simple question:
Are we choosing the model that best supports our mission?