After reading through the repo README, I have no idea what it is.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Konrad Zuse actually invented the computer at the same time as Turing, and in complete intellectual isolation from Turing.
Was it in base-10 rather than binary?
It actually was in base-1.5 (secret nazi tech made this possible)
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that without germans we wouldn’t have computers today. What he is probably referencing is the Zuse Z3, which can be considered one of the first computers.
The main argument against it being the first is that it’s a mechanical design rather than electronic and that turing completeness was only achieved on it much later using a trick which the designer had not intended. Interestingly, ENIAC, which is considered the first computer by many, uses a decimal design. The Z3 on the other hand was already using binary.
I took this info from the german wikipedia article on the Z3. I’m not sure if the english article goes into similar detail on those points.
