[HN Gopher] ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk
___________________________________________________________________
ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk
Author : vincvinc
Score : 475 points
Date : 2025-11-06 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.binnenlandsbestuur.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.binnenlandsbestuur.nl)
| petepete wrote:
| I can't see any links to repos on the website, is it actually
| open?
|
| https://www.opendesk.eu
| hwartig wrote:
| https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk/deployment/opendesk
|
| https://opencode.de/en/software/open-desk-1317
| magicalhippo wrote:
| A bit convoluted but there was an openCode link at the bottom
| which eventually leads you to the repository:
|
| https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk/deployment/opendesk
| mkromkamp wrote:
| https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk
| namegulf wrote:
| Thanks for the link, looks like they offer the whole stack of
| features and more.
| velcrovan wrote:
| Open Desk (since the article doesn't link):
| https://www.opendesk.eu/en
|
| Does anyone have any experience using it?
| clickety_clack wrote:
| I'd love to see pictures. I'd love to drop MS/Google docs for
| something I can control myself.
| juvoly wrote:
| But would you be willing to pay for it? Would your
| company/organization be willing to move?
| simooooo wrote:
| Absolutely not
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Have you tried LibreOffice ( https://www.libreoffice.org/ )
| or OnlyOffice ( https://www.onlyoffice.com/desktop )? Both
| are pretty decent, and free, and also have commercial
| versions.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| MS365/Google docs is something entirely different to the
| old desktop office suites
|
| It's a collaboration tool, with synced storage and file
| management etc
|
| The overlap of a Venn diagram between users of these
| software is not very large - though there is some
| (overlap).
| thisislife2 wrote:
| And both the products I mentioned also support online
| collaboration and storage. See LibreOffice Online (
| https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/
| ), OnlyOffice Workspace (
| https://www.onlyoffice.com/workspace ) and OnlyOffice
| Enterprise ( https://www.onlyoffice.com/docs-enterprise
| ). I can't comment how feature compatible these are but
| alternatives do exist and that's good new for us. (Note
| that openDesk is based on a fork of LibreOffice Online,
| which is a commercial variant for those who don't want to
| bother implementing everything themselves).
| clickety_clack wrote:
| I'm looking for more of a sharing experience. If I'm doing
| something locally myself I tend to use Mac pages, numbers
| or keynote. They're underrated I think as local apps go.
| Getting a whole company on Mac just to use them is a non-
| starter though.
| bix6 wrote:
| No Excel replacement? :/
| dybber wrote:
| From openDesk website:
|
| > Create, edit and share documents, spreadsheets and
| presentations with full support for all major file formats
| turtlebits wrote:
| It's missing from the list of their products though :(
|
| https://www.opendesk.eu/en/product
| opencl wrote:
| The document editing portion just uses Collabora which is based
| on Libreoffice.
| erk__ wrote:
| The Excel replacement they use is this one:
| https://www.collaboraonline.com/calc/
| pjmlp wrote:
| After Microsoft left politics mess up with their customer base
| something like that was to be expected.
| bhouston wrote:
| Microsoft has to follow US sanctions, even if they are
| misplaced. This isn't a choice on Microsoft's part here.
|
| The ICC was applauded in the US in the when it went after
| Russia but when it goes after Israel it is sanctioned. It
| unfortunately hard to be impartial, like the ICC is, when it
| comes to international war crimes. The big players want you to
| play towards their favourites and only hold their enemies
| accountable.
|
| The US is also sanctioning Palestinian human rights groups, and
| kicking them off of US platforms like YouTube, because they
| make Israel look bad:
| https://theintercept.com/2025/11/04/youtube-google-israel-pa...
| sdoering wrote:
| Exactly what the big German corporations (as well as Ford by
| the way) did in the 1930s.
| happymellon wrote:
| And IBM...
| reubenmorais wrote:
| Nobody has to do anything, least of all massive corporations
| with country-sized revenues. It's /always/ a choice to comply
| or to put up a fight and deal with the consequences.
| guiriduro wrote:
| MS could always refocus themselves as a global company (in
| the legal rather than marketing-only sense), and move their
| HQ out of the US, then there could be no Trump tantrums
| affecting other countries, the worse that could happen would
| be some sanctions on what would then be their in-country US
| affiliate, with no ability to affect their other global
| operations whatsoever. Why haven't they followed this
| approach? Haven't lost enough customers yet?
| bawolff wrote:
| > the worse that could happen would be some sanctions on
| what would then be their in-country US affiliate
|
| So what you are saying is the worst that could happen is
| they lose the entire US market, us based datacenters, and
| us based employees?
|
| I think the question answers itself.
| guiriduro wrote:
| No. It would be run by a US affiliate using the Microsoft
| brand, paying royalties to a global company in some other
| jurisdiction.
| bawolff wrote:
| That's not how laws work
| SllX wrote:
| That approach is also insane.
|
| You're always going to be vulnerable somewhere and there
| isn't a better country to be if you're in software, cloud
| services or AI.
|
| Not to mention it's not like Microsoft Execs want to pickup
| and leave the States either.
| guiriduro wrote:
| Don't need to. Would it be a big deal to hop on a plane
| to e.g. Switzerland once a year?
| SllX wrote:
| Doing that little is effectively the same as doing
| nothing at all, and they wouldn't actually be insulated.
| munk-a wrote:
| MS lives by corporate contracts and there are a lot of very
| powerful US companies that will roll over if Trump barks -
| if MS had already fled the US in a legal sense they'd
| definitely be in a better place but trying to leave during
| this administration would cause Trump's ire to focus on
| them and likely cost them an immense amount of money. I
| don't particularly like MS and both office and windows are
| declining in quality quickly so I wouldn't be opposed to
| the move but... nothing would sink that ship faster than
| losing a bunch of large US contracts as Trump toadies
| demonstrate their loyalty by bravely switching to
| alternatives.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Microsoft has to follow US sanctions_
|
| Microsoft has to follow US _law_. If it believes an order has
| been issued unlawfully, it--and everyone who works there who
| follows the order--has a civic duty to oppose the order in
| court.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Quite a few of the things that European authorities have
| been getting worried about the US Government being able to
| force Microsoft to do are explicitly enshrined in US law.
| See, for example, the CLOUD Act:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
| onemoresoop wrote:
| >Microsoft has to follow US law.
|
| while operating in the US
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _while operating in the US_
|
| While having anything to do with America or the U.S.
| dollar.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Microsoft employees in the EU are committing a crime if they
| do participate in the sanctions though.
|
| There's an EU law, 'blocking statue' which also means that
| contracts can't be broken with reference sanctions even if
| the contracts themselves say they can be, and the services
| must be provided anyway.
|
| This isn't GDPR type stuff. This is a path to infinite fines.
| Ending up jail for years is also a distinct possibility if
| you help people access their data, since spying on these
| institutions is actually treated as espionage. We recently
| passed a law here in Sweden forbidding espionage against
| international organizations in which Sweden is part.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Well, if ICC had issued an arrest warrant for Zelensky, it
| would most likely got sanctioned as well. Luckily, ICC is not
| headed by a Russian but by Israel hating Muslim with rape
| allegations pending.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Related, British intelligence firms on Qatari payroll were
| spying on the ICC head's rape accuser
| https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov/06/qatar-linked-
| int...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| As soon as they stole control from their customers computers,
| "leaving politics mess up with their customer base" was
| inevitable.
|
| Or rather, stealing control from their customers computers is
| already leaving politics mess up with the customers.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft
| products in the first place.
|
| USA has been very hostile to the ICC under trump, but its not
| exactly a huge shift, bush was also incredibly hostile. It seems
| borderline incompetent to use a microsoft cloud offering given
| the political situation.
|
| Not to mention given the type of work they do, seems like hosting
| stuff off site at all is a bad plan.
| lysace wrote:
| USA has been very hostile to the ICC since way before Trump.
|
| The ICC was created in 1998 when Bill Clinton was president of
| the USA. He never ratified the Rome treaty. And then GW, Obama,
| Trump and Biden didn't either.
|
| Very few americans batted an eye as far as I could tell. Your
| are after all by definition exceptional. (/s)
| chvid wrote:
| No one thought the US would get this insane.
| bawolff wrote:
| I dont know, when bush threatened to invade the netherlands
| over the ICC, that was pretty insane, and in some ways
| worse than sanctions.
| chvid wrote:
| Sure. But no one thought it, or anything like it, would
| actually happened.
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" The American Service-Members' Protection Act, known
| informally as the_ Hague Invasion Act[1] [sic] _(ASPA,
| Title 2 of Pub. L. 107-206 (text) (PDF), H.R. 4775, 116
| Stat. 820, enacted August 2, 2002) is "_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-
| Members%27_Pr...
| tharne wrote:
| This is not a U.S. specific issue. Once you strip away all of
| the formalities, titles, and ceremonies, you'll realize
| there's no such thing as international law, at least not in
| any meaningful sense of the word.
|
| The law, by definition is a rule backed up by the use of
| force, specifically state-sanctioned violence. If you write a
| law but do not have the ability to use a sufficient amount
| violence to enforce it when needed, you don't have a law at
| all, you just have a suggestion around how you'd like people
| and countries to behave.
|
| The only way you could ever have anything resembling
| "international law", would be to have some sort of global
| military or police force capable of exerting enough violence
| to ensure that the law is followed, and I'm not even sure how
| such a thing would work.
| lysace wrote:
| I mean, yes, you stand with e.g. China. Congrats.
|
| Edit:
|
| Eventual consistency backed by international agreements is
| a very good start. Making sure that the bad guys eventually
| get their day in court is a fantastic thing. Even if they
| happen to be American.
|
| Meanwhile people demand some kind of Hollywood-esque extra-
| national global strike force or else nothing is worth doing
| in terms of accountability? Get real. You are deflecting.
| tharne wrote:
| I feel like this comment ^ was made in bad faith.
| Providing an accurate description of reality is not an
| endorsement of that reality, but I'm pretty sure you
| already know this, and your comment here is more of a
| rhetorical tool than an addition to the discussion.
| lysace wrote:
| Okay, I will spell it out: You are confusing might with
| right.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| No, GP is stating that right can't be enforced without
| being backed by might. Idk how that's controversial.
| mrchucklepants wrote:
| A law with no enforceable consequence is no law at all.
| lukan wrote:
| There is international law. It is made up of all the
| treaties the big and small powers implemented together. But
| yes, not much is left now, but I would argue before Bush
| and 9/11 .. it was in a way better shape.
|
| Global military is not necessary, just consensus to enforce
| it.
|
| Practical example, there is no EU military, but there
| surely are EU laws EU members have to follow.
| stackskipton wrote:
| >Practical example, there is no EU military, but there
| surely are EU laws EU members have to follow.
|
| EU has other levers to enforce compliance like ejection
| from Eurozone or Schengen Area.
|
| Global military is required to enforce it because biggest
| stick wins. Many countries thinks Russia should be
| removed from Ukraine but no one has stepped up to provide
| the military to do so, ergo, in violation of
| international law they remain.
| lysace wrote:
| Trade is a vector, obviously.
| lukan wrote:
| "Many countries thinks Russia should be removed from
| Ukraine but no one has stepped up to provide the military
| to do so, ergo, in violation of international law they
| remain."
|
| I would argue, or rather I know many people from poorer
| countries argue, that why should they care that russia
| violates international law etc. if the US blatantly
| ignored it when they invaded Iraq? In other words, it is
| the same international like it is in the EU, just with
| less trust. Also the EU might fail (and there are
| challenges) if too many members act against the common
| interest. Then the enforcement will fail and so will all
| of EU.
|
| (also, with international support and china not backing
| russia ... it would have worked without military
| involvement. Then the sanctioned would have worked. So
| ... some countries are just happy for the cheap bargain
| for russian oil)
| epistasis wrote:
| > Bill Clinton was president of the USA. He never ratified
| the Rome treaty. And then GW, Obama, Trump and Biden didn't
| either.
|
| Small point of order, but it is the Senate that ratifies
| treaties and not presidents. The Senate is heavily biased to
| overrepresent rural areas, which tend to be very
| conservative, and only 40% of senators can stop any
| ratification. The ICC has been the subject of massive amounts
| of conspiracy theories and misinformation in conservative
| media, so there's approximately zero chance that it could
| ever be ratified, unless the Senate's structure was made more
| representative of the people of the US rather than a
| conspiracy-minded subset.
|
| If the Senate was a democratic representation of the will of
| the US it would not be hard to ratify the treaty.
| lysace wrote:
| Fair. Clinton signed it on his last day in office but
| didn't submit it to the senate for ratification. Seems like
| he wanted it both ways.
| epistasis wrote:
| You're probably very right on that, Clinton listened to
| Kissinger on foreign policy and somebody like Kissinger
| is very much at risk if the US follows international law.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft
| products in the first place.
|
| There used to be this quaint idea of rule of law and things
| like that. We can always argue that governments were happy to
| get dirty and occasionally illegal, and they certainly were.
| But a) it was universally seen as a bad thing, and b) no
| country would have done it so blatantly and openly. Perversely,
| this narrative was important to advance the US' interests
| because it opened opportunities for American companies to go
| deep into foreign administrations. Which they did.
|
| So yeah, the clock ticked and now we're in a new and exciting
| era for geopolitics and who knows what system will prevail in
| the end. What is certain is that the US abdicated their
| leadership.
|
| > USA has been very hostile to the ICC under trump, but its not
| exactly a huge shift, bush was also incredibly hostile. It
| seems borderline incompetent to use a microsoft cloud offering
| given the political situation.
|
| There is a difference between hostility as in "we won't take
| part and won't cooperate in any way" and "we're also going to
| pressure private companies to steal your stuff". The ICC is
| also full of NATO countries and allies so any form of hostility
| has to be calibrated to keep them on your side. If you care
| about alliances, that is.
|
| > Not to mention given the type of work they do, seems like
| hosting stuff off site at all is a bad plan.
|
| Indeed. To be fair, it seems like a bad plan for most large
| companies with anything that looks like industrial secrets, let
| alone a government or such a supra-national organisation.
| themgt wrote:
| > So yeah, the clock ticked and now we're in a new and
| exciting era for geopolitics and who knows what system will
| prevail in the end. What is certain is that the US abdicated
| their leadership.
|
| In fact John Yoo, most famous for authoring the "Torture
| Memos" for Dubya over 20 years ago, has been perhaps the most
| prominent legal thinker arguing in favor of the actions
| Trump's taken against the ICC:
|
| _What can the incoming Trump administration do? It could
| impose severe sanctions on the ICC judges and its prosecutor,
| Karim Ahmad Khan, who engineered this debacle, by blocking
| their ability to transact business through our banking
| system, for example. It could threaten severe sanctions
| against any nation that arrested Netanyahu or Gallant
| pursuant to the ICC warrants. It could also display its
| contempt for the ICC by inviting the Israeli premier to the
| White House and Congress._
|
| _Furthermore, the Trump administration should take action
| against nations that are funding and supporting the ICC so
| generously. Some of the ICC's largest financial benefactors,
| including Japan and the European Union nations, are also
| dependent on the United States for their security. Yet while
| asking Washington, D.C., to protect them, they finance a
| global institution that hamstrings our ability to do so. If
| Tokyo, for example, wants the United States to lead a new
| alliance to contain China, Trump can demand that Japan
| eliminate its subsidy for an international institution that
| seeks to undermine the American national sovereignty he was
| elected to restore._
|
| There's a nearly straight through-line from the logic and
| approach to executive power Yoo helped architect under Bush
| and these attacks on the ICC under Trump. It's just that many
| have decided to bizarrely retcon the Bush administration into
| respected elder statesman instead of the lawless war
| criminals they were and are.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Memos
|
| https://www.aei.org/op-eds/why-international-arrest-
| warrants...
| kergonath wrote:
| > In fact John Yoo, most famous for authoring the "Torture
| Memos" for Dubya over 20 years ago, has been perhaps the
| most prominent legal thinker arguing in favor of the
| actions Trump's taken against the ICC
|
| True. Trump did not appear suddenly out of nowhere and he's
| only able to do what he does thanks to people who prepared
| for this and have been pushing us down the slope for the
| last couple of decades. Thanks for the quote, it's
| important we remember this sort of things.
|
| > It's just that many have decided to bizarrely retcon the
| Bush administration into respected elder statesman instead
| of the lawless war criminals they were and are.
|
| I think that's the fact that Bush is at least able to
| finish a sentence. But yeah, you're right. It was the
| golden age of enhanced interrogation techniques by masked
| men in black in illegal prisons in foreign countries.
| munk-a wrote:
| Lobbying - and likely a fair amount of network pressure from
| legal systems in various nations that lean towards using office
| for internal documents as a default.
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| That, and it's solid, well supported software most people are
| familiar with.
|
| From those doing the paperwork with Microsoft procurement for
| Dutch government I learned there have been legal disputes
| going on for years about what even constitutes "telemetry".
| That was a decade ago, and even then there was push to move
| away from Microsoft in the government. Toward open source, or
| even Oracle.
|
| I suppose that with the Dutch being Dutch all the lobbying M$
| needed was suggesting a discount.
| walletdrainer wrote:
| The main problem is that 365 is just far cheaper than the
| competitors for environments like this, maintaining and
| supporting an open source alternative would be an
| incredibly expensive undertaking.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Maintaining ans support sounds like an opportunity for
| some EU businesses to me.
|
| Sweet gov contracts.
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| In theory, yes, it could be...
|
| But these are "European Tenders", which in practice
| usually translates to: race-to-the-bottom. Unless the
| tender was phrased specifically, from its very first
| inception, to aim at some polical goal - like open
| source, sovereignty, innovation, inclusiveness, etc.
| cachius wrote:
| When I think of Teams, I don't think of solid, well
| supported software.
| iso1631 wrote:
| No doubt they started using it in the 90s when you bought a
| copy of software, and Microsoft had no control over your
| computer.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| The story of Microsoft's stack in a nutshell and why everyone
| is still so dependent on it. Migration is hard, and it only
| gets harder the longer you've built yourself on top of a
| particular technology.
|
| Microsoft offered what basically amounted to "IT in a box."
| You got identity, email/groupware, an office suite, and an OS
| that ran on just about any IBM compatible PC and your own
| servers. You paid for the license, and then you controlled
| and hosted it after that. Microsoft was content to let you do
| whatever the hell you wanted with their software, and stuck
| to their promise to not break shit (backward compatibility
| for Win32).
|
| That everything is now cloud hosted and stuffed with
| telemetry was a big rug pull, but it's not like everyone
| could just up and migrate to something else (and what else,
| for that matter, there's not much out there that matches). It
| was literally just this year that on-prem exchange support
| ended for the one-time purchase license, but even then on-
| prem is still available via subscription.
|
| Microsoft gave every incentive in the world to get
| enterprises to stick with their stack, and it worked, so it's
| no wonder people are just now starting to panic a little and
| look for alternatives.
| bawolff wrote:
| They were created july 2022. USA started threatening one
| month later in august.
| iso1631 wrote:
| The ICC was created in 2022?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| It's basically the "No one gets fired for buying IBM" effect.
| Microsoft became the default. Everyone was familiar with it,
| and knew it would work.
| tharne wrote:
| People tend to underestimate the value of a solution that
| folks, especially less technical folks, are already trained
| on, comfortable with, and one that is known to work as
| expected.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| This is exactly why Canva is handing out Afinity for free.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I'm sure people get killed all the time for using American
| services. It's just that they were all brown "terrorists",
| not liberal Intitutions situated in Europe, until now that
| is.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I know how to use MS Office. All my colleagues know how to
| use MS Office. People want to solve their daily problems, not
| learn how to use new software.
| margorczynski wrote:
| That's a very simplistic view of what Microsoft offers. They
| don't sell an office software package but a very robust
| solution for running the software side of a business.
|
| The OS, office package, email (server and client), calendar,
| cloud & backup, BI, etc. all aligned work almost seamlessly
| with each other (compared to the alternatives for sure).
|
| Nothing on the market comes close and that is the reason they
| are worth trillions, not because they use closed formats.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| I agree this is a big part of it.
|
| Office sucks?: "Man Office sucks these days."
|
| The "weird" alternative you expended political capital to put
| everyone on works slightly differently or lacks a feature out
| of the box?: "What were you thinking?!"
| amelius wrote:
| It was basically "if the US ever plays this card, all hell
| will break loose for their IT companies". So ICC and others
| simply assumed it would not happen.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| The same reason most organizations use it -- inertia and
| because it's been the standard for so long, it's the best at
| what it does.
|
| The startup I used to work at was exclusively on OSX +
| GoogleDocs, when we were small, but as we grew (and especially
| when the Finance team grew) more and more employees found a
| need for the MS Office Suite as well as apps that only run on
| Windows, so they started rolling out Windows VM's and then full
| Windows machines.
| booi wrote:
| I'm curious which apps only run on Windows. We are also a
| MacOS + Google Workspace shop and the microsoft requirements
| have been slowly seeping in.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I don't know what native apps they needed Windows for (I
| wasn't doing IT work by then), but I was still setting up
| PC's when they said they needed Windows Excel (not Excel on
| Mac, not Office365) for some forecasting spreadsheet
| product they purchased - it only ran on native Excel. We
| gave them Windows in a VM on their Mac at first, but
| eventually they had more and more apps that ran on Windows
| and moved from Mac to Windows laptops.
| vladms wrote:
| How much do you think they should spend on IT to be independent
| from Microsoft (serious question) ? Wikipedia mentions they
| employ 800 persons working in several buildings and a detention
| center for a budget of 141 million USD.
|
| Microsoft O365 Business Premium per person is 22 USD per month
| so total per year is ~200k USD (online price, I imagine they
| can negotiate a bit for that amount of people).
| spwa4 wrote:
| Do you mean just the ICC ... or all government organizations
| in the same boat, just not necessarily realizing it yet,
| inside the EU?
| cge wrote:
| >I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft
| products in the first place.
|
| Public institutions in Europe, in my experience, often have a
| confusing insistence on using Microsoft cloud products.
| Universities heavily push Office 365 and Teams, often trying to
| demand that faculty use them, while faculty continue to use
| alternatives as much as possible in order to actually work
| effectively. During the pandemic, the only online conferences I
| attended that insisted on running via Teams, against all
| reason, were run by a UK public institution, and they had as
| many embarrassing technical problems as might be expected.
|
| This is despite Microsoft's cloud services being generally
| designed for businesses and often poorly suited for public
| institutions, especially universities. The services are
| fundamentally built with the assumption that work will
| primarily take place within a single organization, with clearly
| defined employees. European research collaborations constantly
| seem to be hobbled by needing to use hacks around this
| assumption, but the inexplicable importance of using Microsoft
| seems to outweigh these problems. In the most ridiculous case,
| a conference online during the pandemic asked everyone during
| registration to please not register using their university
| email address, but to use a personal one not associated with
| any Office 365 account, because they had no way of allowing
| access to Teams if the email address was managed by Microsoft
| at a different university. Yet still the importance of using
| Teams was paramount to the organizers.
|
| I have had no clear explanation of why using Microsoft services
| is so important, despite them being so poorly suited to the
| institutions, so opposed (and often just not used) by many of
| the actual users, and arguably being used in ways that they are
| not really intended to be used. I've had some people claim it
| is necessary for GDPR compliance, despite the GDPR compliance
| of any US company being on shaky ground. Microsoft itself has
| described what seem like rather extensive contingency plans
| around US-enforced GDPR violations or requirements for service
| cutoffs (there is a blog post somewhere), but these must also
| imply a fear that such things could actually happen (and, of
| course, actually did happen with the ICC). It all seems rather
| strange.
| tptacek wrote:
| Does someone have an English language link for this?
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| perihelions wrote:
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/31/international_crimina...
| ( _" International Criminal Court kicks Microsoft Office to the
| curb_ / _" Rough justice? Redmond out as Germany's openDesk
| judged a better fit"_ (Oct. 31))
| Elfener wrote:
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/31/international_crimina...
|
| (was submitted to HN 3 days ago
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45797515)
| Elfener wrote:
| It's actually not called Microsoft 365, but "the Microsoft 365
| Copilot app" (not to be confused with Microsoft Copilot (a slop
| generator with the same logo))
| iammjm wrote:
| It IS called Microsoft 365
| bonyt wrote:
| Looks like openDesk uses Collabora Online, which is itself based
| on libreoffice online - web based libreoffice.
|
| https://www.opendesk.eu/en/product#document-management
| ("Collabora Online powers openDesk with a robust office suite
| designed for efficient teamwork and secure document editing.")
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collabora_Online ("Collabora Online
| (often abbreviated as COOL) is an open-source online office suite
| developed by Collabora, based on LibreOffice Online, the web-
| based edition of the LibreOffice office suite.")
| trelane wrote:
| More than that--Collabora is a major (maybe the _biggest_ )
| contributor to LibreOffice.
| slwvx wrote:
| The lack of anything at all on the roadmap page [1] and lack of a
| link to their code repository on a blog post touting their open-
| source cred [2] does not build confidence. I found their code
| repo link in the comments here, after not finding it easily on
| their site.
|
| EDIT: to be clear, I'm all for open source software, and for more
| options to tools from big tech firms.
|
| [1] https://www.opendesk.eu/en/roadmap
|
| [2] https://www.opendesk.eu/en/blog/open-source-software-trust
| Lapel2742 wrote:
| At least they seem to be actively working on it:
|
| https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk
|
| They have some real users too. I know of some out of my head.
| According to ChatGPT:
|
| - Robert Koch Institute (RKI) - entered a contract on 11 June
| 2025 to use openDesk as the technical basis for the "Agora"
| platform for public-health authorities.
|
| - BWI GmbH - the IT infrastructure provider for the German
| armed forces (Bundeswehr); signed a framework contract for
| openDesk.
|
| - Bundesamt fur Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie - also
| mentioned as an early adopter of openDesk.
|
| - Foderale IT-Kooperation (FITKO) - listed as a user in the EU
| OSS Catalogue entry for openDesk.
|
| I think I read that some German states use the software too.
|
| You never know what will happen in the long run but the
| solution will probably be maintained for some time given it's
| backing by the federal government of Germany.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Robert Koch Institute (RKI) - entered a contract on 11 June
| 2025 to use openDesk as the technical basis for the "Agora"
| platform for public-health authorities.
|
| Wow - I was just thinking this would be good. Here in the UK
| Microsoft are slowly taking over healthcare with their
| terrible Dynamics 365 platform, and some competition would be
| really nice.
| jraph wrote:
| I work for one of the several European companies building open
| source software that has been chosen as components of openDesk.
|
| openDesk is solid, legit and serious.
|
| Open source is a requirement. As such, money doesn't go to a
| startup building proprietary software that get bought a few
| years later by a big tech company and then all the investment
| is lost. They audit and check that licenses are open source and
| that the dependencies have compatible licenses.
|
| It's publicly funded, by Germany* (for their needs, but it will
| grow larger than them). Their strategy is to give money to
| established European open source software companies so they
| improve their software in areas that matter to them, including
| integration features (user management, for instance, or file /
| event sharing with other software, many things) as well as
| accessibility. They take all these pieces of software and build
| a coherent (with a common theme / look & feel), turn-key,
| feature-rich suite. This strategic decision that has its
| drawbacks allows to get something fast with what exists today.
|
| I'm not sure communication and the business strategy is all
| figured out / polished yet, but with the high profile
| institutions adopting it, it will come. Each involved companies
| wants this to succeed too.
|
| I think this is huge. I'm quite enthusiastic. Software might
| not be perfect but with the potential momentum this thing has,
| it could improve fast, and each piece of open source software
| that is part of this as well along the way.
|
| * see also caubin's comment
| evolve2k wrote:
| Lawyers historically are notoriously linked to Microsoft and its
| formats as a somewhat unintentional industry side standard.
|
| Moves like this hearten me as for certain lawyers the formats and
| standards they now will be expected to follow has just shifted,
| towards open source no less.
| mikestew wrote:
| I remember when lawyers historically used WordPerfect for the
| same reasons. Now, I don't know the details of how that
| industry shifted (MS dominance and WP shitting the bed with
| their GUI versions would be my guess), but it shows that it is
| possible.
| jeffwask wrote:
| I did MS Word support in the long long ago during its
| transition to dominance. There was nothing worse than getting
| a call from a lawyer who was forced off Word Perfect.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a lawyer who was forced off Word Perfect_
|
| My lawyers at big firms still use it, though they export
| .doc(x).
| mikestew wrote:
| But how are they exporting such a modern document format?
| Holee crap, because it's still being sold an updated!
| https://www.wordperfect.com/en/
|
| And the suite includes Quattro Pro, for those that are
| itchin' for that spreadsheet-flavored blast from the
| past. If I didn't already have the Apple suite on my Mac
| (which does all I need out of an office suite), I'd spend
| the $50 for home/student version just for the lulz.
| p_ing wrote:
| https://www.wordperfect.com/en/product/professional-
| edition/
|
| Look at those screenshots! It's still a Windows 95
| look'n'feel (which some HN users might enjoy).
| vincvinc wrote:
| Related:
|
| "IMPOSING SANCTIONS ON THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT" (white
| house, feb 2025) https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/02/impo...
|
| Microsoft admits in French court it can't keep EU data safe from
| US authorities (jul 2025)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45822902
| yupyupyups wrote:
| >Microsoft admits in French court it can't keep EU data safe
| from US authorities
|
| Snowden leaked that fact before Microsoft made the admission.
| But it's good that it's coming from them officially
| nonetheless.
| tokai wrote:
| It kind felt like the ramifications of Snowden's leak were so
| wast that everyone just chose to forget about it.
| realusername wrote:
| There's definitely a political game of pretending that the
| US clouds are somehow compatible with GDPR.
| bayindirh wrote:
| IIUC Snowden sent complete trove to two publications only,
| and one of the computers containing the trove is destroyed
| through and through, disabling that publication for Snowden
| leaks.
|
| Moreover, again as I understand, after a certain point the
| leaks are stopped, because the message was sent, and people
| now know the most important bits behind the curtain.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Theres a difference between as an intelligence organisation
| having access to data, and "someone in power is angry because
| they watched a TV advert, I want to see what they know"
|
| but, your over all picture is still, sadly correct.
| pureagave wrote:
| For most of my life I also used to think there was a
| difference between the two. But now I realized they are
| actually just the same.
| shreddit wrote:
| They couldn't be more different. One is doing it in
| secrecy and for a "reason", to spy on someone. The other
| one will do it in public because he can and doesn't like
| your name.
| statguy wrote:
| does it matter if you are the one on the receiving end?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Which of these is meant to represent the current regime
| in power in the U.S.?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I understand the disillusionment. The gutting of the US
| machinery of state is disheartening to see.
| whatever1 wrote:
| I don't understand why this is the case though.
|
| Could MS create a new EU based company in which it just owns
| shares ?
|
| Or is the US cloud act so wide that they can demand data from
| all the companies a us based company has equity in?
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| MSFT already operates in Europe via subsidiaries for a whole
| host of reasons. But hiving certain assets off in a
| subsidiary is very rarely effective to avoid laws and
| regulations that apply to the parent. The parent controls the
| subsidiary so a court or regulator having jurisdiction over
| the parent could order it to get what it needs from the
| subsidiary. This is particularly so in the US, which is kind
| of known for enacting overreaching extraterritorial laws.
| whatever1 wrote:
| So let's say I am eu citizen I own a data center company in
| Brussels.
|
| I sell 1 stock to MS USA. Can they at any point demand all
| my data ?
| ahi wrote:
| They can try, but presumably as a tiny shareholder you
| would tell them to go f themselves. Subsidiaries don't
| have that luxury.
| danielheath wrote:
| The laws I have read used the term "effective control";
| if a shareholder is able to control the org (eg can
| replace the CEO or board), they are obliged to comply
| with government orders regarding that org.
| skissane wrote:
| > The parent controls the subsidiary so a court or
| regulator having jurisdiction over the parent could order
| it to get what it needs from the subsidiary.
|
| But what if the parent's jurisdiction orders the parent to
| order the subsidiary to do something illegal in the
| subsidiary's jurisdiction? If local management obey the
| order, they risk being prosecuted by their jurisdiction's
| authorities-so they'll likely refuse. What is the parent
| going to do then? Fire them? But will any replacement act
| any differently? "Is this job worth going to prison over?"
| Most people answer "no", and people who answer "yes" won't
| last, because you can't run a subsidiary from a prison
| cell.
|
| I think the real issue here is that the US gets away with
| it because the EU is still so dependent on the US (see
| NATO) they can't push back fully, at some point a political
| calculation takes over. So it could be that the US parent
| orders the subsidiary to do something illegal under EU law,
| and then the EU authorities choose to ignore it.
| shiandow wrote:
| I'd be surprised if this isn't already the case. The extent
| to which you can do business in the EU without legal presence
| is limited.
|
| It is not a huge amount of protection though. I mean we've
| already established that selling to 'terrorists' can be
| sanctioned even when selling through an intermediary. So
| what's stopping the US from ordering Microsoft to stop
| selling licenses to the ICC?
|
| And then we've not touched on who is in control of the closed
| source of the many proprietary applications.
| XorNot wrote:
| It's not about having a subsidiary, it's about the
| technical structure of 365 meaning Microsoft US has access
| to Microsoft EU servers and thus US employees can be
| compelled to follow US court orders.
|
| They simply don't separate the infrastructure this way
| AFAIK.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Oh I see the point. So MS US has credentials for the
| infra in EU.
|
| So no reason to deal with any European citizen or court.
| You just threaten the US IT guy to give you the EU
| credentials.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| Yes, and the Cloud Act pretty much forces upper
| management to ensure that there is always a US IT guy
| that can be compelled to implement the wishes of The US
| Federal Government, as the penalties apply to executives
| of US companies, too.
|
| We can quibble about whether the term "threaten", which
| implies some moral wrong doing, is correct though. It's a
| law with defined criminal penalties. That's how criminal
| law works
| mattmaroon wrote:
| If you're Microsoft do you really want to anger the federal
| government? Companies aren't as cavalier about taking them on
| as they used to be. They're likely Microsoft's largest
| customer by far, and they have the power to end you (which
| they nearly did once).
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Could MS create a new EU based company in which it just
| owns shares ?
|
| That would be a seperate company, plus if its licensing tech
| from MS then it's still vulnerable to supply chain attacks.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| There are attempts to losen the control from the U.S. side
| like a cooperation between Microsoft/Azure and SAP or Google
| and T-Systems (deutsche Telekom) where the German side would
| run an "air gapped" region of those cloud stacks.
|
| However I believe the rates in the end were too high to win
| notable contracts, but I haven't followed along in a while.
|
| https://www.heise.de/news/Digitale-Souveraenitaet-
| Microsoft-...
|
| https://t3n.de/news/t-systems-sovereign-cloud-google-
| verwalt...
| caubin wrote:
| Hei hei,
|
| I'm working for the XWiki and CryptPad projects, which are
| integrated in openDesk. Here are a couple links / infos that can
| be interesting to understand the context of openDesk.
|
| The openDesk project comes initially from an initiative of the
| Ministry of Interior of Germany in 2021, to build the alternative
| to Office 365. The project was progressively transferred in 2025
| to a state-owned organization, the ZenDis (https://zendis.de),
| which oversees the global development of openDesk.
|
| The source code is mainly available on
| https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk, where you will find
| mirrors of every project which is bundled into openDesk
| (Nextcloud, Collabora, Element, Univention, XWiki, Jitsi,
| OpenXchange, CryptPad, OpenProject, ...)
|
| There was also a couple public presentations about openDesk at
| FOSDEM during the past years :
|
| * In 2024 :
| https://archive.fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3...
|
| * In 2025 :
| https://archive.fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5...
| evanjrowley wrote:
| I appreciate your comment. I'm thrilled to learn that CryptPad
| is part of the openDesk solution.
|
| >CryptPad was selected to join the German "Sovereign Workplace"
| project, now called openDesk.
|
| https://blog.cryptpad.org/2025/01/28/CryptPad-Funding-Status...
|
| Many more details in this blog post from XWiki:
| https://xwiki.com/en/Blog/XWiki-CryptPad-knowledge-managemen...
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I find it fascinating to see how much power Germany's "digital
| sovereignty" initiative has gained. In the beginning, it looked
| like yet another government thingy that nobody will use. But by
| now, they must be well above 100k government employees using it
| daily.
|
| Also, in case you missed that: StackIt is the AWS / G Cloud
| competitor by LIDL: https://www.stackit.de/en/ It's the
| basebone for their app strategy with 100 mio+ client installs
| and about 500k employees.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Every time this happens Microsoft either threatens to move
| out or promises to move in with a chunk of their operation.
| Blackmailing with jobs has been very effective for them.
| testing22321 wrote:
| It seems likely the ICC will issue an arrest warrant for Trump in
| the coming years. I see all their recent moves as a signal they
| want to distance themselves from the US so they can actually
| issue that warrant.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| There are quite a few reasons that should happen, but I won't
| hold my breath. And I that issuance really won't do anything
| worthwhile, except be a footnote in a history book.
| pfortuny wrote:
| There seems to be no spreadsheet...
| spwa4 wrote:
| Will it matter if the whitehouse realizes that they control
| accepting of email from the icc's domains for at least 80% of the
| worlds' email addresses?
| sixothree wrote:
| I think the more concerning thing is what happens when the
| trickle turns into a deluge
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing thread:
|
| _OpenDesk - a flexible all-in-one office suite for the public
| sector_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45838239 - Nov
| 2025 (19 comments)
| amriksohata wrote:
| ditches is a strong word here, we change software providers for
| different tooling all the time
|
| dependency on american corps is a bit weird, when they wont move
| away from windows just for one presendential term surely? trump
| will be out in X years. whats the point?
|
| some of these organisations are now more politically aligned than
| ever questioning their neutrality
| uvesten wrote:
| So, reading the documentation in the [repo](https://gitlab.openco
| de.de/bmi/opendesk/deployment/opendesk/...) it's immediately made
| clear that you should use the Enterprise Edition for production
| use. (Since the German state is behind this, why not focus on
| totally free software for production use?)
|
| But what really surprised me are statements like this in the
| README:
|
| " Nextcloud Enterprise: openDesk uses the Nextcloud Enterprise to
| the build Nextcloud container image for oD EE. The Nextcloud EE
| codebase might contain EE exclusive (longterm support) security
| patches, plus the Guard app, that is not publicly available,
| while it is AGPL-3.0 licensed.
|
| And
|
| COOL Controller container image and Helm chart: Source code and
| chart are using Mozilla Public License Version 2.0, but the
| source code is not public. It is provided to customers upon
| request. "
|
| This, according with other paragraphs describing percentages of
| free and non-free code in certain components really makes me
| wonder...
| bayindirh wrote:
| It's a misconception that (A)GPL source code should be publicly
| available.
|
| GPL family mandates source code access to people who can access
| to the software itself. So as long as ICC gets the source code
| of the NextCloud EE and the Guard app, the GPL is fulfilled.
|
| This is how RedHat operates, and is not a violation of GPL.
|
| Also, this is how you can build a business around GPL. You only
| have to provide source code to people who buys your software,
| or you can sell support to it.
|
| Another example: Rock Solid curl [0].
|
| [0]: https://rock-solid.curl.dev/
| drnick1 wrote:
| But presumably, under the GPL, someone who obtained the
| source code, perhaps by paying for it, can freely publish
| that source code, and non-disclosure agreements are void.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yes. See Rocky Linux.
| eeasss wrote:
| All else aside, Microsoft 365 as an office suite screams for
| disruption. If you don't believe me try actually using their
| copilot and observe the poor integrations with core products such
| as Excel/Word/Powerpoint. Sorry for the offtopic but it really
| hurts for those of us who are forced by their CIO to use this
| thing.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Yes, the product is terrible and easily beat out by a
| competitor. However, most people who are forced to use it is by
| dictate their own company CIO, hence MS has captive audiences.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| I can't find a single screenshot of opendesk applications
| anywhere - including their own website. This is extremely
| strange.
| baumschubser wrote:
| Meanwhile in southern Germany.
|
| https://www.heise.de/en/news/Bavaria-wants-to-move-to-Micros...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Rightly so. They should have never used it in the first place.
| What with the US not recognizing the court it always made very
| little sense to me that they would rely on the infrastructure
| components to be supplied by the USA. The latest sanctions are
| just another step in something that was already in motion from
| day #1.
|
| The world order at the highest level relies on the nations
| themselves to behave, especially the largest ones because nobody
| has the practical power to enforce the decisions of the court in
| case defendants are in places where the court is not recognized.
| To USA not recognizing the court has always shown that they don't
| care about the crimes they commit.
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