Quick answer up front: the EU Data Act makes switching providers noticeably easier — but it doesn’t end vendor lock-in. Only open source does that.
Anyone who’s ever tried to move away from a big cloud provider knows the feeling: the door in swings open easily, the door out sticks. That’s exactly where the EU Data Act, in force since 2025, comes in.
What the Data Act delivers
For the cloud, the rules on switching providers and interoperability are the interesting part. Providers now have to actively support a switch to another service instead of artificially obstructing it. The notorious egress fees — money you pay to pull back out your own data — are supposed to go away. And data has to be handed over in common, machine-readable formats. That’s real progress: lock-in gets more expensive for providers and cheaper for you.
But the law doesn’t solve everything. Moving between two proprietary clouds is still work. If your processes are deeply embedded in a provider’s specialty services, switching is a lot of effort — law or no law. The Data Act lowers the hurdle, it doesn’t remove it. And whether moving back pays off at all is its own calculation.
Open source sidesteps the problem
The more elegant answer is to never get stuck in the first place. Open software runs anywhere: at your place, at a service provider’s, in any EU cloud you like — though an EU region is not the same as an EU provider. Open formats keep your data readable even without the original provider. You decide where it runs, and you can take it with you at any time. That’s the idea behind cloudsourced: open source, run in the EU, without chaining you to a provider.
Quick comparison:
| Data Act (legal) | Open source (technical) | |
|---|---|---|
| Switching providers | Providers must actively support it | You decide yourself where it runs |
| Data formats | Mandated: common, machine-readable | Open and readable by design |
| A provider’s specialty services | Switching stays a lot of effort | Doesn’t apply — nothing is proprietary |
| The hurdle to switching | Gets lowered | Gets removed |
The Data Act gives you the right to switch. Open source makes sure you rarely need it.
Stuck in lock-in and want to know what a way out looks like? Cases like this are exactly what my consulting takes apart — write to me, we’ll take an honest look at what’s possible.