---
url: 'https://dri.es/contentful-and-the-limits-of-buy-european'
title: 'Contentful and the limits of "Buy European"'
author:
  name: 'Dries Buytaert'
  url: 'https://dri.es/about'
date: '2026-06-01T14:30:19-04:00'
license: 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/'
type: blog
tags:
  - Drupal
  - 'Open Source'
  - 'Digital sovereignty'
discussions:
  - { platform: LinkedIn, url: 'https://www.linkedin.com/posts/buytaert_salesforce-is-acquiring-contentful-one-of-share-7467287100405469184-Tprp/' }
published: true
featured: false
id: 6201
---

# Contentful and the limits of "Buy European"

This morning, [Salesforce announced its plan to acquire Contentful](https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/salesforce-signs-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-contentful/).

Congratulations to Sascha Konietzke, Paolo Negri, and the whole Contentful team. They spent 13 years building Contentful into one of Europe's most visible enterprise software companies. Salesforce buying Contentful is real validation of the product, customers, and team they built.

The deal makes sense for both Salesforce and Contentful. Salesforce has long had a CMS-shaped hole in its product offering, and Contentful fills it with a mature, enterprise-ready SaaS product.

To me, the more important question isn't whether the acquisition makes strategic sense, but what it means for digital sovereignty. It's a textbook example of why "Buy European" isn't enough.

Before I go further, let me be clear about where I'm coming from. I founded [Drupal](https://www.drupal.org/) and still lead the project, and I co-founded [Acquia](https://www.acquia.com), the company built around Drupal, where I'm Executive Chair. So when I argue that this deal exposes a problem, you should factor in that Open Source is both my life's work and my livelihood.

Contentful is a German company, Contentful GmbH, registered in Berlin. For over a decade it has been a flagship European software company. 

If the acquisition closes, it becomes part of Salesforce, a US corporation, and falls under US law.

For many of Contentful's customers, this acquisition will be a non-event. For governments, public institutions, and regulated industries, it exposes a harder truth: *a vendor being European today is no guarantee it stays European tomorrow*.

A practical example is the [US CLOUD Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act). Many people may not know about it, but it becomes relevant anytime a non-US vendor is acquired by a US company. 

In plain English, the CLOUD Act means that US authorities can require any US company to disclose data it controls. That can apply even if its data is stored in Europe, managed by a European team, or running on European infrastructure.

This is not a hypothetical concern. The law came out of a [dispute between Microsoft and the US government over emails stored in Ireland](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-2_1824.pdf). US Congress changed the law while the case was pending, making clear that US providers can be required to produce data stored abroad.

That does not make Contentful a bad company. It does not make Salesforce a bad owner. And it does not take anything away from what the Contentful team built.

But it shows the limit of "Buy European". Contentful spent 13 years as a trusted European vendor, and one board meeting is enough to put it under US law. 

An Open Source license changes that. Drupal customers running on Acquia, my own US-based company, are also exposed to US law. But because Drupal is Open Source, they can move to a European hosting partner, self-host, or fork the code. A Contentful customer cannot.

The Contentful team deserves credit for what they built. Few European software companies have reached its scale and size. But this is also a reminder for Europe. For software that governments, public institutions, and critical industries depend on, sovereignty must survive any acquisition.

That is the point of [The Software Sovereignty Scale](https://dri.es/the-software-sovereignty-scale) and [The Sovereignty Prerequisite](https://dri.es/the-sovereignty-prerequisite) that I submitted to the European Commission as feedback on their [Cloud Sovereignty Framework](https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/09579818-64a6-4dd5-9577-446ab6219113_en?filename=Cloud-Sovereignty-Framework.pdf).

Open Source is the only way to guarantee long-term choice, control, and governance over your code, data, and infrastructure.

*Special thanks to [Tiffany Farriss](https://www.drupal.org/u/farriss) for her review of this blog post.*

PS: Follow the discussion on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/buytaert_salesforce-is-acquiring-contentful-one-of-share-7467287100405469184-Tprp/).