Opinion on BeLibre - Belgian independent knowledge and policy platform

FOSS just passed Mythos' stress test

Jurgen Gaeremyn — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:00:00 +0100

TL;DR: In April, Anthropic announced an AI model called Mythos that had reportedly found thousands of serious security bugs in every major operating system and web browser. The reaction was loud: The Bank of England warned regulators it could “crack the whole cyber risk world open”, US Treasury called in the big banks, NHS England closed all its public code repositories inside two weeks. Five weeks on, the dust has settled and the picture looks different: Independent reviewers pulled the headline numbers apart. The creator of curl, one of the most widely used open-source tools in the world, ran the Mythos report against his own code and found it had identified one minor flaw, calling the hype “primarily marketing”. 99% of Mythos’s claimed findings remain unpublished and unverified. What did happen in those five weeks is that the open-source world fixed and disclosed its share of the bugs publicly, in the open, on commit logs anyone can read. That is open source working as it is supposed to, so don’t call open-source a liability. The lesson for our administrations is the opposite of NHS England’s. Closing your code does not make you safer. Funding the open ecosystem you already depend on, and using similar AI tools defensively on your own code, does.

Europe Measures Digital Sovereignty. Why Doesn’t It Publish the Results?

Jurgen Gaeremyn — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 17:20:00 +0100

On April 17, 2026, the European Commission awarded a €180 million tender to four European cloud providers: Post Telecom (Luxembourg), StackIT (Germany), Scaleway (France), and a consortium led by Proximus (Belgium). This was the first procurement process where digital sovereignty was explicitly measured and used as an award criterion. To do this, the Commission developed and published its Cloud Sovereignty Framework in October 2025, which divides sovereignty into eight domains and five assurance levels.

One year of BeLibre: why digital freedom concerns us all

Jurgen Gaeremyn — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:00:00 +0100

Imagine waking up one morning to find that the local council no longer knows who is entitled to social support. That the hospital can no longer access patient records. That the police have lost their communication systems. Not because of an attack, but simply because one American company somewhere far away has a technical outage, raises its prices, or suddenly refuses access.

Sounds far-fetched? Less than you might think. But this article is not about fear. It is about what becomes possible when you make conscious choices.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? When Geopolitics Hits Your Cloud, HR and Bank Account

Jurgen Gaeremyn — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:00:00 +0100

# The Reality of Digital Dependency

DNS records from the previous article paint a clear picture: over 70% of Belgian public institutions (e.g. hospitals, police, schools, defence, municipalities) rely on Microsoft’s cloud for daily operations. Systems run smoothly. Salaries arrive, patients receive care, lessons continue. The instinct to maintain what works makes sense.

The challenge comes from concentration: a single foreign platform supporting critical workflows, subject to distant laws and remote management. By late 2025, US providers held over 70% of Europe’s cloud market, local alternatives below 15%. Belgium’s situation highlights what happens when public services align on one stack. Recent events show these dependencies carry real consequences, but they also illuminate substantial opportunities ahead.

If FIFA can do it, so can we

Jurgen Gaeremyn — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:00:00 +0100

We’re here live from the cafeteria, for the announcement of the BeLibre world soccer champion!

Last week, the international soccer federation showed us once again how awards work these days. After the big boss felt slighted, FIFA pulled a few feathers out of its ass and delivered them with a deep bow. They created the brand new “FIFA Peace Prize,” specially awarded during the 2026 World Cup draw.

Belgium Can’t Afford Microsoft to Go Down: A Wake-Up Call on Digital Sovereignty

Jurgen Gaeremyn — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 17:20:14 +0100

So we’re using Microsoft at the Belgian government? So what, that’s not a bad thing, is it? I mean, it does a great job and everybody uses it. Right? After all, it’s the safe option. “Nobody ever got fired for choosing ~~IBM~~ Microsoft.

“Hey US, I thought we were friends?” This question isn’t rhetorical anymore. As tariff threats escalate, wars redraw geopolitical alliances, and digital infrastructure becomes the backbone of every critical service, Europe faces an uncomfortable truth: we’ve outsourced control of our digital future to a handful of American corporations.

BeLibre Sovereignty Map

Mon, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Interactive map where you can discover digital sovereignty in municipalities, schools, emergency services or other critical infrastructure in our country and beyond.