The International Criminal Court (ICC) will switch its internal work environment away from Microsoft Office to Open Desk, a European open source alternative, the institution confirmed to Euractiv.
German newspaper Handelsblatt first reported on the plans. The switch comes amid rising concerns about public bodies being reliant on US tech companies to run their services, which have stepped up sharply since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second administration.
For the ICC, such concerns are not abstract: Trump has repeatedly lashed out at the court and slapped sanctions on its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan.
- Never heard of open desk… - Why not pick the typical LibreOffice? - Although they didn’t pick LibreOffice, the project which I personally use, a move from the entire ICC to choose opensource software is insane. Hopefully, and likely any funding they will do to improve software will go to the opensource community 
- they seem to do different things. The opendesk website tells me that besides documents they also do identity management, email, cloud storage and videocalls. - I mean sure. But what is the quality of those services, specially since this is kind of an unknown software in the Linux world… 
 
- opendesk is eu driven backed by funding specifically for enterprise and government institutions. 
 
- If the OpenDesk software is open source, will that mean each government body will start using a different flavor of it? Seems like an upkeep nightmare for governments. - Standards address this issue. Set them, adhere to them, have a mechanism to adjust them or create new ones when absolutely needed 
 




