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Germany has just made the standard Open Document Format (ODF) mandatory (blog.documentfoundation.org)
submitted 2 months ago by FirmDistribution@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] ruplicant@sh.itjust.works 151 points 2 months ago

good!

Germany’s decision to anchor ODF at the heart of its national sovereign stack confirms what we have argued for years: open, vendor-neutral document formats are not a niche concern for some technology specialists and FOSS advocates. They are a fundamental infrastructure for democratic, interoperable and sovereign public administrations.

I'm gonna repeat this, as expressed here, to a few people

[-] S_H_K@lemmy.dbzer0.com 41 points 2 months ago

As a guy who worked with property recods in US fucking yes. Some states gove the records in a closed format invented by one company. So you have to have their software if you want to work in some states.
Add it to the pile of illegal shit that is legal I guess...

[-] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

I've heard building codes can be just as bad, some places the law just says to follow a book and you have to pay some company like $300 to get the book and license things

[-] Freakazoid@lemmy.ml 84 points 2 months ago

Hopefully the rest of Europe will follow.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 38 points 2 months ago
[-] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 27 points 2 months ago

Despite being so shit in many different respects (a chronic use of external consultants and contractors means the UK seems less likely than other European countries to make progress on a sovereign tech stack), the UK is pretty good with its data. There's a surprisingly amount of data that's released and is in a sensible format.

During the teachers strikes last year, I ended up using playing around making visualisations using the data about the number of teachers in various parts of the country, and I was pleased to see how much there was there and how clearly it was documented. There are very few things I'm proud of the UK for, so I am glad to have this as one

[-] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

The UK seemingly got some cool nerds in the government: the gov.uk sites were regarded as the golden standard of design and accessibility in the 2010s, idk about currently. Commercial designers straight up studied gov.uk's design guidelines to see how a job like that should be done.

[-] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 7 points 2 months ago

Yeah, I knew that, it's super cool, and it came to mind as I was writing my earlier comment.

What's neat about the website stuff is that even if it's not as good now (idk, I haven't looked), that value they created is still there in the older case study — there were so many good resources. I was the disability rep in a few student societies, as well as in a few volunteer orgs after uni, and we referenced the guidelines a few times. Good resources like that are especially useful in those contexts — because they helped turn "that would be nice, but we don't have the resources to implement accessibility in our materials" into "okay, let's put our money where our mouth is and do our best to make something as accessible as we can"

[-] fluxx@mander.xyz 55 points 2 months ago

Wow, some good news on Lemmy? Sign me up!

[-] Slovene85@sh.itjust.works 23 points 2 months ago
[-] themaninblack@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Sick! Are there any more of these?

[-] Allero@lemmy.today 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

!upliftingnews@lemmy.world

!positivity@lemmy.today (shameless self-promotion)

[-] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 34 points 2 months ago

Hell yes. I wonder how many man-hours of strategy meetings MS had on their calendars to fend that decision off.

[-] wrinkle2409@lemmy.cafe 30 points 2 months ago

Based

[-] Kapirotto@lemmy.ml 30 points 2 months ago

It's so good to see initiatives like these! Hope it spreads across Europe and the World.

[-] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 months ago

Gotta love Germany.

Fun fact: the German equivalent of the BBC, DW, will teach you German if you want to learn it, for free. A but niche but a nice thing to do!

https://www.dw.com/

[-] LorIps@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

DW isn't the equivalent of the BBC. It's more of a equivalent to e.g. Radio Free Europe. DW is entirely funded by the German government, in contrast to the BBC or ARD/ZDF which are independently funded. I'm not saying DW is bad, but it isn't the equivalent of the BBC.

[-] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

Their contract with Microslop must be up for renegotiation.

[-] maplesaga@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Much of Europe break their own procurement laws to choose Microslop, no idea why.

[-] recycle_me_please@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 months ago

Gut

[-] ripcord@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

I remember reading this headline in 2004

this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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