1 yr. ago • 98%

The German government is working on an OSS "Sovereign Workplace"

https:// gitlab.opencode.de /bmi/souveraener_arbeitsplatz/deployment/sovereign-workplace

It was announced about one year ago

39 comments

I am curious how this will turn out. Germany is not known for state driven digital innovation and this is a huge project.

Even though I am highly sceptic, I hope they finally manage to get something going because Germany and whole Europe needs more independence from US hyperscalers.

I fear this will die in good old German bureaucracy though.

70
- I fear this will die in good old German bureaucracy though.
  
  I believe so too, but there is hope because at least they're trying something. It should be "released" into the alpha stage in December, but I have no idea what it will look like.
  
  17
- [...] and this is a huge project.
  
  This makes me skeptical too. I'd be interested to hear about smaller projects to replace some creaky system relying on the output of some long-gone contractor's overengineered software being faxed around.
  
  Those projects have no cool name and are probably really hard to get funding for. But sometimes I can't help but feel that might be more effective than these "big bang" projects.
  
  7
  
  Oh clearly, let me fill my taxes online please
  
  1
  
  Oh clearly, let me fill my taxes online please
  
  0
  
  Oh clearly, let me fill my taxes online please
  
  0
- Probably like DE-mail.
  
  3
  
  DE-mail was doomed to fail from the start. Here, they did some things right. Let's see how it turns out.
  
  5
  
  What's that?
  
  1
- Dude Germany is literally the reason we have computers.
  
  People love to give Turing all the credit, but he wouldn’t have needed to build it if not for the Germans.
  
  -18
  
  Turing and Church did a lot of the heavy lifting for the theoretical side and contributed heavily to automating the decoding of the enigma encryption, but the most common modern computer architecture was decided in a conference in New York. The person that is credited with designing the architecture is named John Von Neumann.
  
  Before them, it was Babbage, an Englishman. How did Germany contribute to computers? That's not to say that I don't think Germany can't handle designing this software, they definitely can. But they didn't have a very big hand in the history of computers
  
  14
- Permanently Deleted
  
  -19
  
  Long history would imply continuity, not "so long ago that nobody in the comment section is old enough to have lived through it".
  
  17
  
  Glad comments don't get disappeared through downvoting, it's bad when people want to erase history.
  
  2
After reading through the repo README, I have no idea what it is.

28
- Looks to me like they're trying to build something like office 365, but open source. Mostly by wiring other open-source components together I think?
  
  This is probably a better starting point, unfortunately the text is in German: https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/souveraener_arbeitsplatz/info
  
  30
  
  Exactly.
  
  The goal is to allow a completely free and open-source deployment of an O365-like infrastructure in order to prevent being tethered to Microsoft, for example. The main use seems to be so that municipalities can set up something cheaply and quickly, without any licensing headaches.
  
  8
- After reading through the repo README, I have no idea what it is.
  
  A much better overview (in German):
  
  https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/souveraener_arbeitsplatz/info/-/blob/main/OVERVIEW.md
  
  12
  
  From that Overview.md:
  
  openDesk auf gitlab.opencode.de Der openDesk integriert Open Source Anwendungen bekannter Anbieter zu einer browserbasierten Open Source Kollaborations-Suite.
  
  Der openDesk ist ein digitaler Arbeitsplatz für die Öffentliche Verwaltung mit Fokus auf Digitale Souveränität, Nutzerfreundlichkeit und Zukunftsfähigkeit.
  
  Das Open Source Softwareprodukt "openDesk" ermöglicht die Wiederverwendbarkeit von Open Source Quellcodes der Öffentlichen Verwaltung und gibt Raum zur Teilhabe an der Weiterentwicklung. Flexible Weiterentwicklungsmöglichkeiten erlauben das Einbringen eigener Ideen, Anforderungen und Anwendungen.
  
  Als Betriebsumgebung von openDesk kommt Kubernetes zum Einsatz. Die teilweise nicht originär für den Containerbetrieb ausgelegten Anwendungen werden dabei mehr und mehr für dieses Betriebsszenario optimiert.
  
  translates to
  
  The openDesk integrates open source software of known publishers to a combined open source collaboration suite.
  
  The openDesk is a digital workstation for the civil/public service with focus on digital sovereignty, usability, and future proofness.
  
  […] offers opportunities for collaboration for continued development. […]
  
  openDesk runs in a Kubernetes environment. The in part not originally developed to be containerized applications are and will be further optimized for that runtime scenario.
  
  14
- I’m not sure, but I think this is a FOSS, Selfhosted, O365 replacement-in-a-box. Well, helm chart.
  
  Pretty cool IMO.
  
  10
- I'm having trouble with that too. It seems to be a kubernetes deployment using helm charts of all the services they would like to have in every commune (or wherever this will be federated).
  
  I was expecting the definition of OS and software to use locally as well. But dunno... it reads like it's written by bureaucrats.
  
  8
- Neither has the creator.
  
  2
They tried something similar in Munich, i think, dropping M$ and going full Debian. A few years later they reversed that 'cos the lusers couldn't handle it.

8
- And because Microsoft moved their HQ to Munich
  
  22
Related:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_sovereignty

https://element.io/features/data-sovereignty

3
So they want to create Univention Corporate Server, except not that?

-1

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