Opendesk – a Flexible All-in-One Office Suite for the Public Sector
Posted2 months agoActive2 months ago
opendesk.euTechstory
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Open-Source SoftwareOffice SuitesPublic Sector Technology
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Open-Source Software
Office Suites
Public Sector Technology
The OpenDesk office suite is introduced as a flexible all-in-one solution for the public sector, sparking discussion about its uniqueness, system requirements, and the broader context of office software alternatives.
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Nov 6, 2025 at 1:04 PM EST
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ID: 45838239Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 4:50:34 PM
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But even if it is, then as long as federation is off, nobody else will see any metadata but them.
If you DON'T, Google Sheets, Google Docs, OpenOffice etc. work fine.
Not going to be running this at home any time soon
- 12 cores
- 32 GB ram
- Kubernetes cluster
Finally a use cases for all those awesome overpowered homelabs I see on Reddit.
For the rest of the world this seems excessive. Even for a small company these are pretty unreasonable requirements. I wonder what their design considerations were?
It’s also BYO-database so there is certainly other requirements above and beyond just the stated above when you include running the database clusters.
I guess they could offer a hosted solution but that's usually a challenge to get approved in most government agencies (even if the contracting party is also sponsored by the government).
$1,200, fits in the palm of your hand: https://www.amazon.com/MINISFORUM-Pro-370-Desktop-Computer-G...
Which public administration are you HotGarbage?
Unfortunately, even if it's entirely possible to imagine an office world built like what we can have today in org-mode/Emacs, e.g. https://youtu.be/u44X_th6_oY rather than Positron (R Studio's successor) for most people it's still a taboo; there's a significant reactionary attitude even in IT.
ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45837342
It does illustrate that the EU has started to understand something that S/W devs seem to have totally forgotten: dependencies are bad, use as few as possible.
The rest of the world has not yet caught on. When I was in Japan this past summer, I was shocked at how dependent business, government and individuals are on US internet infrastructure.
I tried describing the ICC situation, and most people (even s/w devs) stared with a blank face.
The main thing I wonder about the opendesk project in general is, why do they think it's only for the "public sector"?
Do government employees use email differently from other people? Does their calendar s/w need some special features?
To me this just seems like an office productivity suite, for everyone.
The opendesk project should expand the concept of who they intend to serve...
ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45837342 - Nov 2025 (77 comments)