Germany's Sovereign Digital Stack Mandates ODF: a Landmark Validation of Open Document Standards - TDF Community Blog
blog.documentfoundation.org
The Document Foundation (TDF), the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice, welcomes the inclusion of the Open Document Format (ODF) as a mandated standard format in Germany’s Deutschland-Stack, the federal government’s sovereign digital infrastructure framework for all public administrations. The Stack, published by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernisation (Bundesministerium für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung), establishes the technical standards for a shared, interoperable and sovereign digital infrastructure serving all Germany’s public administrations. Under the framework’s “Semantic Technologies and Real-Time Analytics” pillar, ODF and PDF/UA are explicitly named as the two mandated document formats, to the exclusion of proprietary alternatives. “This is not a recommendation or a preference, it is a mandate,” said Florian Effenberger, Executive Director of The Document Foundation. “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.” The Deutschland-Stack is grounded in a set of principles that align with TDF’s long-standing advocacy positions. The framework adopts a “Made in EU first” principle, requires open interfaces and local data storage,
  • sakphul@discuss.tchncs.de
    194·
    1 day ago

    This is something very important: Don’t focus on aplications (FOSS or not) but on open data formats and proper import/export mechanisms so you can switch applications easily.

    • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.socialEnglish
      381·
      1 day ago

      That’s why I use Obsidian! It’s not open source, but all my notes are just… pre-emptively saved as markdown files on disk. If they fuck me over I can just leave and open it in literally any markdown editor 😭

      If they used a proprietary format, I probably just wouldn’t have used them in the first place and would have had to use a shittier alternative.

      • ornery_chemist@mander.xyz
        1·
        12 minutes ago

        Obsidian is pretty good. I currently use Logseq, which has a slightly different model that clicked a bit better for me. As a bonus, it’s open-source.

      • R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        5·
        12 hours ago

        Same! Them using markdown means I’ve been able to make an Obsidian-like app for Wear OS, with a phone app to sync your vault to the watch. Wouldn’t have been possible if they weren’t using markdown. Hoping to launch it on the Google Play store in a month or so :)

      • u_tamtam@programming.dev
        36·
        6 hours ago

        You could, I don’t know, use an open source note taking app? I mean, it’s not like obsidian has some unique and unmatched capabilities ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

        • JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.net
          4·
          4 hours ago

          What is a plaintext (non-database) md editor that had wikilinks, LaTeX, back links, tags, PDF export, properties and dataviews, and a plugin community? Plus it needs an android app and desktop app that can be synced (even just via syncthing) seamlessly.

          I am always open for switching!

          • u_tamtam@programming.dev
            1·
            21 minutes ago

            If you drop the plaintext requirement (which IMO is anachronistic, if not for the necessity to fend against a potentially turning hostile developer in a close-source set-up), you may find https://triliumnotes.org/ liberating.

            If you must stick to the “notes as plain text files” paradigm, siyuan is better than obsidian in about every aspect, and logseq in other, more niche ones. Trilium is better than them all (IMHO), being the only one that does “note as data” correctly and efficiently (you don’t have the same data model divide like seen in notion between notes and databases).

            • u_tamtam@programming.dev
              1·
              18 minutes ago

              Joplin is reasonably good as long as you don’t use so much metadata to keep things organised. It’s also pretty rigid, and hence limiting. If you want something with the superficial simplicity of joplin, but that would scale up to your needs, I recommend giving https://triliumnotes.org/ a good look.

            • JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.net
              1·
              19 minutes ago

              Vscodium for notes, interesting.

              I looked into joplin before obsidian actually, but it is much more of a standard note taker, not good for zettelkasten sort of notes (link and tag focused)

          • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            32·
            3 hours ago

            The silence is deafening, because there isn’t a FOSS program that comes close to Obsidian’s functionality. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone drop the “lul just use FOSS instead” line to garner upvotes, when literally no FOSS alternative exists. There are some FOSS programs that come close in some regards, but none of them do everything Obsidian does and support multiple platforms.

            Lemmy has an obsession with FOSS (for good reason) but that means many users basically try to act like FOSS vegans. They’d use six different (and largely incompatible) FOSS programs just to scratch the surface of what a closed-source program can do. And their hackles start to raise if you ever point out that there aren’t FOSS alternatives for everything.

            • u_tamtam@programming.dev
              1·
              9 minutes ago

              ok, but there’s not much substance to your comment besides unsubstantiated “zealotry” towards obsidian and some general hot takes against lemmy and the FOSS community through which it emerged.

              Maybe you could start listing out a few aspects and features of obsidian that you deem so important and unique, and I’m sure that you may discover a few very compelling alternatives.

              As far as I’m concerned, I’m all set with https://triliumnotes.org/ . It’s not just a more versatile and capable note taking app, it’s also one that I can deploy simultaneously “local first” and “as a web service”, so my notes are reachable everywhere (even where I’m not allowed to install the heavy client).

            • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
              2·
              2 hours ago

              The silence of two hours ago lol

              Chill brother. Like i get it, and FOSS advocates should lead with meaningful alternitives first imho, but there definitly seems to be some https://joplinapp.org/

              I personally prefer vscodium and nvim myself for notes but that isnt a one for one comparison to obsidian (in either direction) imho

      • lelovsky@szmer.info
        4·
        18 hours ago

        I love obsidian, I wanted to send a donation, but they only sell merch with expensive shipping :<

        • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.socialEnglish
          6·
          12 hours ago

          A combination of CommonMark and GitHub Flavored Markdown so it’s compatible with most markdown formatting people are used to. Also supports LaTeX and HTML. (and of course any custom syntax modifications you make with custom CSS or plugins)

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    187·
    1 day ago

    This is not a recommendation or a preference, it is a mandate,

    ODF’s mandate is the document-layer expression of that principle, as you cannot claim digital sovereignty while allowing your documents to be locked in proprietary formats controlled by a single vendor.

    incredibly based

  • mogoh@lemmy.ml
    451·
    1 day ago

    I think this is not (entirely) true. Or at least I have some questions:

    • Is this an enacted law that I missed? Because it looks like it is a work in progress.
    • “All levels of government” Really? We have federalism. I am not sure, if that can be mandated by the governments.

    BTW: https://deutschland-stack.gov.de/

    I have searched a bit further: For federal and state governments, ODF is binding through IT Planning Council resolutions and federal guidelines, but there is no formal law yet mandating its use. Also, this is not binding for local authorities, but virtual it is.

    https://www.it-planungsrat.de/beschluss/beschluss-2025-06

  • morto@piefed.socialEnglish
    23·
    1 day ago

    At least something good amid all the bad news regarding the future of software systems