SURF is deploying and testing open-source platforms across its 120 member institutions to reduce vendor lock-in, strengthen digital sovereignty and give researchers greater control over data and infrastructure.
Dutch education and research IT cooperative SURF is expanding the use of open-source software across its 120 member institutions, running practical pilots alongside existing Big Tech services to reduce vendor lock-in and strengthen digital sovereignty.
The initiative began after the AlgoSoc research programme asked SURF to identify alternatives to proprietary platforms. Over the past five years, the cooperative has translated principles such as privacy, autonomy and digital sovereignty into real-world technology deployments.
Open source now underpins 38 of SURF’s 50 digital services. The cooperative selected Nextcloud as its primary collaboration platform, migrated its Surfdrive file-sharing service from OwnCloud to Nextcloud for tens of thousands of users, and now provides a full Nextcloud workspace—including file sharing, video calls, chat and calendars—to 30 institutions serving around 1,500-2,000 users.
SURF is also piloting PeerTube as an alternative to YouTube, Mastodon as a social media platform, and an AI hub on its own infrastructure that offers open AI models, allowing institutions to switch between models such as Mistral and GPT-NL without rebuilding applications.
“We do not just write position papers about becoming independent from a supplier. We try to act on them as well,” said Wladimir Mufty, Programme Manager for Public Value and Collective Digital Sovereignty at SURF.
Mufty added, “Transparency, interoperability, building on each other’s work, reuse: you can achieve those almost exclusively with open source. With proprietary software, you pay twice for every improvement you make.”
SURF demonstrated that flexibility by migrating tens of thousands of Surfdrive users from OwnCloud to Nextcloud in a single weekend after six months of preparation. The initiative aligns with a broader Dutch push for digital sovereignty as public institutions increasingly reassess dependence on major technology vendors.
