Europe's push towards digital sovereignty is gaining serious momentum in 2025. Amid growing concerns over data privacy, access, and surveillance, many regions are distancing themselves from U.S.-based tech giants like Microsoft in favor of open source alternatives.
A growing number of European initiatives are working to keep infrastructure, data, and innovation within the continent. Their goal is to reduce dependence on foreign tech platforms that lock in customers and to build long-term digital independence through local open source development.
In a notable development, two European open source organizations have teamed up to offer an alternative to two popular workflow tools.
What's Happening: XWiki and OpenProject have announced that they are working on creating a fully open source alternative to Atlassian's Confluence and Jira, two of the most widely used workflow and collaboration tools out there.
Confluence is a popular platform for team documentation and knowledge sharing, while Jira is known for issue and project tracking across teams. Together, they dominate enterprise collaboration but remain proprietary and primarily U.S.-based.
As for the two organizations, XWiki is a well-known provider of open source enterprise wiki and knowledge management solutions, offering advanced collaboration features for businesses. It also develops CryptPad, a privacy-focused, end-to-end encrypted suite that many of us know and love.
OpenProject complements this with its open source project management platform, designed for agile workflows, task tracking, and team collaboration.
Speaking on the matter, Ludovic Dubost, CEO and Founder of XWiki, added that:
By combining our expertise, we’re creating a compelling alternative to Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence — one that puts control and transparency back into the hands of the user. It’s a step forward for open-source collaboration in Europe, and most importantly, it responds directly to what our customers have been asking for.
What to Expect: The goal of this initiative is to create an open, modular stack that allows teams to collaborate efficiently without the worry of vendor lock-in, forced upgrades, or loss of control over their data.
By combining their strengths in documentation handling and knowledge sharing, XWiki and OpenProject are working to deliver a unified, open source platform for managing both content and projects.
With backing from public sector efforts like ZenDiS and its openDesk platform, the project lines up with Europe's broader goals of digital sovereignty and accessible, self-hosted infrastructure.
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