OpenDesk is basically a huge helm file that configures the individual apps.
Given enough RAM it should be rather simple to deploy.
You can start right away, there is a community edition:
https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk/deployment/opendesk
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.
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))
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.")
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.
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.
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 :
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.
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.
Trump's life-span is likely to not be a very large number of years from today given his age, and systemic health problems.
SO I expect ICC would find other people, e.g. Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, who are helping to commit these areguably war-crimes in the Pacific and Caribbean seas, the missile strikes against civilian non-US vessels.
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
So, reading the documentation in the [repo](https://gitlab.opencode.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…
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.
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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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 69.5 ms ] threadhttps://www.opendesk.eu
Does anyone have any experience using it?
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.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
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.")
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
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.
"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
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...
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.
SO I expect ICC would find other people, e.g. Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, who are helping to commit these areguably war-crimes in the Pacific and Caribbean seas, the missile strikes against civilian non-US vessels.
OpenDesk – a flexible all-in-one office suite for the public sector - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45838239 - Nov 2025 (19 comments)
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
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…
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Bavaria-wants-to-move-to-Micros...
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.