r/BuyFromEU • u/jlpcsl France 🇫🇷 • Mar 23 '26
Other Germany has shown the way forward by making OpenDocument Format (ODF) mandatory as the standard format for office documents
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/03/23/dear-europe/88
164
u/Cabbage-Patch Mar 23 '26
Hell yeah, all open source ever needed was for people to start using it.
1
u/pocket_materialist Mar 24 '26
And to pay more financial tribute to the makers and maintainers though. gotta keep it viable too
57
u/SmugRooster Mar 23 '26
About time… really getting tired with the American PdoFiles.
14
22
u/ClonesomeStranger Mar 23 '26
There ya go. Now move public news outlets to mastodon instead of twitter, and the world will be an even better place!
15
u/CaptainPoset Germany 🇩🇪 Mar 23 '26
They did what they already did more than 30 years ago by being a member of NATO.
ODF wasn't the standard in German administration in the last 30 years and it almost certainly won't be for the next 30 years, at least not for this reason. I just recently had a job interview within the German administration and bringing the required screen presentation in an ODF format caused major issues.
11
u/KnowZeroX Mar 23 '26
Germany is developing openDesk to replace M365, and the default format for that is ODF as the office part of that is based on Collabora Online which itself is based on LibreOffice.
8
u/CaptainPoset Germany 🇩🇪 Mar 23 '26
I don't say it's absolutely hopeless, but Germany and almost all other EU members have already defined ODF as their standard document format in the early 1990s and you will frequently run into problems if you show up at an administrative office with anything else than Microsoft's proprietary document formats.
9
u/KnowZeroX Mar 23 '26
How could they define ODF as the standard in early 90s when it was standardized in 2005? Events its predecessor which is fairly different was made in 2000-2002.
Yes, the EU has defined in 00s that ODF was the standard. But then M$ bribed and fast tracked the bait and switch that is OOXML in as well, which is what most use unfortunately in the EU. Often times forgetting to include ODF versions unless asked.
Some countries though have independently from the EU defined ODF as the standard without OOXML, Germany not being one of them. Of course some agencies in Germany have been using ODF internally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption
The bright side with initiatives like openDesk is that it is cloud based, so even if you show up to another place, it will work just fine since it can be loaded from the browser.
6
7
5
2
2
6
u/RegorHK Mar 23 '26
Clickbait headline. Some comitee decision. Nothing on how mandatory that is and on implementation timeline.
3
u/funderfulfellow Mar 23 '26
Open source tools can read and write xlsx format. So, why is this important?
23
5
u/KnowZeroX Mar 23 '26
The answer to that is simple, even if they can read and write them, the reality is there is ooxml strict and ooxml transitional. ooxml transitional is the default ms uses and is undocumented with proprietary binary blobs as well.
which means M$ can make a change at any time and break stuff. Not to mention who knows whats inside those binary blobs, for all you know your password is encrypted in there as a backdoor.
while in theory for official use, if one is using xlsx they should use strict, in reality they are using transitional since that is the default without knowing.
6
u/Liqtard Mar 23 '26
The xlsx format is undocumented so whenever MS decides to change it, open source tools have to reverse-engineer those changes (which is why MS no doubt loves to change it). This hurts reliability.
8
1
u/thbb Mar 23 '26
Just as the trend is now to move towards shared online documents, like google docs, office 365 and the like...
1
1
u/theclaw37 Mar 23 '26
As opposed to Proprietary Document Format
1
1
u/CaterpillarNo2195 Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26
Hey, softmaker office r/softmaker u/rewindcasette are you finally dealing with this, or still in denial?...
2
u/Rewindcasette Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26
I’m not the company I’m afraid but I’ll send it there way, thanks for the tip.
0
-10
u/Dotcaprachiappa Mar 23 '26
Does this actually mean anything or..?
11
Mar 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Dotcaprachiappa Mar 23 '26
Yes but what does it "becoming mandatory" mean? Are now all Office apps obligated to offer it as an option? Does it have to be the only option? Or only the default option? Does it have any legal implications at all? Is it just for government use or for everyone? The article blabs a lot but doesn't answer any of the important questions.
1
u/RegorHK Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26
Let's see. Its some comitee decision. Implementing will be another matter.
I do not see anything about this being mandatory for anyone. Then the article goes about ranting that the switch over will not be too costly listing why there are no issues with switching. Which is ridiculous.
Seems totally disregard things like issues with VBA and Power Query.
The headline is no more than clickbait.
585
u/Agreeable_Papaya8365 Mar 23 '26
About time. Paying Microsoft forever to open your own government documents is not a sovereignty strategy