We're honored to welcome Tristan Nitot to We Make Commons — one of Europe's earliest and loudest advocates for free software, open standards, and a web that isn't owned by any single company.
Bringing Mozilla to Europe
As founder of Mozilla Europe, Tristan spent years championing Firefox and the open web at a moment when browser choice itself was under threat from closed, proprietary alternatives. That work wasn't just about market share — it was about keeping the fundamental infrastructure of the web, the browser itself, in the hands of a nonprofit mission rather than a single commercial gatekeeper.
From browsers to digital sovereignty
Tristan went on to co-found Cozy Cloud, a French personal cloud platform built around user data ownership and privacy, and has remained a persistent public voice on digital sovereignty, surveillance, and the risks of concentrating digital infrastructure in the hands of a handful of dominant platforms — French and European independence in tech being a recurring thread throughout his career.
Why this matters for We Make Commons
Tristan represents the long arc of the digital commons movement: from the browser wars of the 2000s to today's conversations about sovereign, open infrastructure, the underlying fight has always been the same — keep the foundational layers of the internet as shared, accountable, open commons.
Welcome to We Make Commons, Tristan. Glad to have you.