The International Criminal Court (ICC) is abandoning Microsoft Office in favour of German open source office software suite openDesk.

The Apache 2.0-licensed openDesk is a project explicitly backed by Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior.  It brings together at least nine other open source software (OSS) suites. It is maintained by Germany’s Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDiS) on GitLab and launched in 2024.

The planned move was first reported by German publication Handelsblatt on October 30. It comes amid a steady drumbeat of news about similar migrations by European entities, amid a digital sovereignty drive.

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