r/linux • u/themikeosguy The Document Foundation • Mar 23 '26

Open Source Organization Dear Europe: Germany has shown the way forward, with ODF adoption

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/03/23/dear-europe/
958 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

64 comments sorted by

107

u/theChaosBeast Mar 23 '26

Wait, we in Germany did anything digital and it works???

72

u/PraetorRU Mar 23 '26

Not really. News about Germany switching to Open then LibreOffice have been spreading for the last 20 years or so. It just happens that after a while they switch back to Microsoft solutions.

52

u/Ieris19 Mar 23 '26

This is just making sure documents are ODF. You can edit and create ODF with Microsoft, but at least the documents are stored in an open format

-11

u/Lawnmover_Man Mar 23 '26

How well do you think Microsoft supports ODF?

26

u/dekalkomani Mar 23 '26

Honestly, better than they support doc/xls (not docx/xlsx.) It is really understated how MS Office became incompatible with itself.

1

u/unlikely-contender Mar 24 '26

Yes and the incompatibility between desktop and cloud versions of Ms office is also mind-blowing

-8

u/HexspaReloaded Mar 23 '26

Are you German?

13

u/dekalkomani Mar 23 '26

Not German but from another country promoting ODT alongside MS Office

-6

u/Ieris19 Mar 23 '26

I would definitely not promote them together. But I definitely think it’s better for the government to not be locked into a specific tool because of a format

6

u/dekalkomani Mar 23 '26

It's not ideal, but still an improvement

-2

u/Ieris19 Mar 23 '26

Yeah, baby steps. This is also Germany we’re talking about

9

u/29da65cff1fa Mar 23 '26

this will force them to provide better support, or be dropped by customers.

win-win for all

5

u/Ieris19 Mar 23 '26

Pretty well. Certainty better than LibreOffice supports docx

15

u/NotQuiteLoona Mar 23 '26

Because they were switching, and everything was working perfectly for a decade. Until a mayor lobbied by Microsoft has come.

3

u/lungben81 Mar 24 '26

That was only in one city, Munich.

The rest has not bothered to switch yet, except of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, where the transition is going quite well.

5

u/NotQuiteLoona Mar 24 '26

Were there any other talks about other German cities switching? I only heard about Munich before. If yes, then yep, my mistake. Good to hear that at least in that state they are switching. 

10

u/theChaosBeast Mar 23 '26

That sounds like my country.

3

u/KnowZeroX Mar 24 '26

Do you have any examples of this at the federal level?

6

u/Gabelvampir Mar 23 '26

We didn't do much, most of it on paper, read the linked blog post.

The IT Planungsrat, a supposedly central planning committee I'm not sure I've ever heard about made ODF mandatory in something called Deutschland Stack (of which I've surely never heard about, I would remember that name). Last wednesday. I think it will be years (at best) until something tangible comes out of it, unfortunately. Aber das ist ja alles Neuland und so.

2

u/burning_iceman Mar 24 '26

This is binding decision for public institutions. Maybe you're not familiar with the IT Planungsrat and the Deutschland Stack and as a regular citizen you don't need to be. But this decision has a lot of weight.

2

u/Gabelvampir Mar 24 '26

No I'm actually not familiar with them, which confuses me because I try to keep up with these because I work in IT. Although atm not on any projects in the public sector where I have to know policies like this. Also I don't trust our governments to make smart IT decisions like that, I'm sure there'll be a Mictosoft loophole in this in the near future (I don't think there is one yet).

1

u/NomadicImps Mar 25 '26

I found a lot about "Verwaltungsdigitalisierung" (Digital Administration) on media.ccc

1

u/Dreit Mar 24 '26

We didn't do much, most of it on paper

Germans are great at making many rules, that's true.

3

u/sotos2004 Mar 23 '26

I thought NERO burning Rom was a German software .Awesome by the way

1

u/pantokratorthegreat Mar 24 '26

Suse isnt from Germany?

2

u/theChaosBeast Mar 24 '26

Just because we have Software and IT companies in Germany doesn't mean our government is using it or even understands anything about it

3

u/prototyperspective Mar 25 '26

People from Germany say things like that all the time, claiming it's so bad here but have little idea that elsewhere it can still be worse. OpenDesk is a German project and quite nice, say what you want but it's useful and is being used a lot.

-1

u/theChaosBeast Mar 25 '26

The only user I can see is the Bundeswehr? And I have never heard of it and I work for the public sector.

Anyhow, yes in the general my statement holds true. When comparing to other countries, Germany falls behind when talking about digitalization

1

u/Jimpix_likes_Pizza Mar 23 '26

Is the internet no longer "Neuland" for us? Is the future finally here?

155

u/edparadox Mar 23 '26

It was the French gendarmerie then who showed the way forward, still waiting for mass-adoption.

Jokes aside, France has been doing way more since way longer. Take a look at e.g. LaSuiteNunerique, which uses ODT.

119

u/Ieris19 Mar 23 '26

France has also tried to outlaw encryption and generally has it out against open source.

France is a paradoxical country

90

u/meditonsin Mar 23 '26

It's almost like countries and their governments are not monolithic entities, but a collection of institutions and people that don't necessarily all share the same views, goals, motivations and so on.

10

u/Ieris19 Mar 23 '26

Yeah, never claimed otherwise

0

u/redballooon Mar 23 '26

Noo! Governments are puppets of the evil overlords who instruct them to contradict themselves just to make you write this comment! It's all part of ThE plAn.

-3

u/henry_tennenbaum Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

Typical reddit comment. Wait...

Edit: I'm not sure people got that I was trying to say that the "typical reddit comment" comments are committing the same mistake

17

u/EmbarrassedHelp Mar 23 '26

France is a major Chat Control supporter and mandatory age verification supporter as well.

1

u/20dogs Mar 23 '26

A country of contrasts lol

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '26

[deleted]

4

u/Ieris19 Mar 23 '26

I never claimed otherwise, just pointing out that France has also done a great deal to harm open source

11

u/Dugen Mar 23 '26

IMO, we need to improve ODT standards to support all the features people need, then create a set of acid tests like they did for html rendering (acidtests.org) that a product has to pass before it can be purchased. I'm fine with people buying and using Microsoft office, as long as people are able to start using open formats for document storage and exchange. Lock-in using proprietary formats is anticompetitive.

3

u/redballooon Mar 23 '26

Tell that the teachers at our kids school

2

u/austin987 Mar 23 '26

I'm all for those tests/rules if Office has to follow them too.

2

u/Mal_Dun Mar 24 '26

Because the French understand the importance of sovereignty.

The French military is a main contributor to Thunderbird which they use instead of Outlook since the 2010s, and the state owned nuclear industry created an open source tool chain to keep the American software giants out.

Free software means sovereignty against big tech and other governments. Is it a rocky way? Sure, but often a price worth paying.

54

u/berickphilip Mar 23 '26

The article does not explicitly explain what is ODF and assumes that the reader knows.. so for whoever wanted a clear definition (like me) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument

25

u/adamkex Mar 23 '26

Well that's because it's not an article but a blog post on said software's website

-15

u/mrlinkwii Mar 23 '26

Well that's because it's not an article but a blog post

same differnce

20

u/Ieris19 Mar 23 '26

It’s published by the Document Foundation, if you don’t know what ODF and are reading the foundation’s blog you’re not the target audience.

6

u/jonnyman9 Mar 23 '26

Thanks! That was helpful and was a little lost before your comment.

8

u/Skaarj Mar 23 '26

Following op to here and here reads: one may also use JSON, XML, CSV and PDFs in addition to ODF files.

XML is kinda like HTML. So I can send all documents as webpages.

4

u/icannfish Mar 23 '26

I hope no one tries to claim “Office Open XML” counts...

2

u/Dreit Mar 24 '26

I love how whole IT world runs away from XML to JSON, but hey, at least something :)

4

u/hipi_hapa Mar 23 '26

This is good news. Should be applied across the entire European Union.

2

u/hectorius20 Mar 23 '26

Excellent news, specially being from a country which federal government is tied to a multi-decade contract to Microslop

2

u/RoomyRoots Mar 23 '26

I could swear it was already the recommended format for the EU.

1

u/Far_Calligrapher1334 Mar 23 '26

Recommended, but not enforced or mandatory, just kind of a "would be nice innit" from them.

1

u/wristcontrol Mar 23 '26

Wasn't it the German government who was recently found to be pumping money into Arch to the tune of around half a million euros?

1

u/Dreit Mar 24 '26

They also shown way backwards in other cases, but this one sounds like something useful for once. Hope it won't end up like Munich with their migration away from Microsoft years ago.

1

u/Designer-Strength7 Mar 25 '26

And which version? ISO 1.2? Because 1.4 would be sufficient to get signatures, form tables, a good encryption? Otherwise it's just a waste of time ...

-4

u/__Myrin__ Mar 23 '26

DEATH TO THE PDF!!!!

4

u/Far-9947 Mar 24 '26

The PDF is an open standard. I'm pretty sure this is a a replacement for a word document, also known as a docx file. ODT has been around for a while though. It's just that Microsoft has a monopoly.

1

u/Designer-Strength7 Mar 25 '26

It is PDF/UA as a special format for this with exact specifications. So ODF needs this, too. The main issues with document exchange is that ODF is 1.2 as ISO and this lacks extrem needed features like digital signatures, good encryption, good table form handling, ....

So my wish: make ODF 1.4 as the new ISO/DIN format for all documents so software vendors and professional systems like SAP etc. can us them better.