Open Source – into civil circulation

rabiakhatun

The Russian government's decree on the experiment notes that its participants include the Ministry of Digital Development, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rosreestr, and, on a voluntary basis, the Russian Foundation for Information Technology Development (RFRIT), federal executive bodies, state extra-budgetary funds of the Russian Federation, executive bodies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, state corporations, legal entities and individuals who submitted applications before April 1, 2023.

The experiment will last until April 30, 2024. Based on its results, a regulatory framework for publishing open source software will be formed.

RFRIT must ensure the creation of a national repository of such software, as well as formulate the selection procedure and requirements for the operator of this repository - a Russian NPO. It is indicated that the organization of the repository will be provided without attracting funds from the federal budget.

In addition, the resolution contains a content writing service form of open license, under the terms of which software will be published by government agencies and corporations.

Earlier, Deputy Minister of Digital Development Maxim Parshin noted the importance of supporting the community of open source software developers and creating an environment for their joint work free from sanctions risks. "Thanks to the published form of an open license, software created, including with budget funds, can be used to implement new projects," the deputy minister said.




As Lyubov Orlova, director of the ANO "Open Code", told RSpectr, the share of open source software on the market is growing every year. "Therefore, it is necessary to grow and develop open source software developers within the country, and create all the conditions for this," the expert believes.

In a comment for RSpectr, Nikolai Sokornov, Director of the Software Development Department at Reksoft, noted that state enterprises and departments have accumulated a sufficient amount of software of various classes that was created using budget funds. The idea of ​​its reuse and development by the developer community is quite logical. He also recalled that the most popular international repository GitHub is managed by a Western company, and access to it can be restricted for Russian developers at any time.

FASTER AND CHEAPER

According to Alexey Smirnov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bazalt SPO, the experiment is aimed at working out all the legal and organizational aspects of publishing software developed by government order under a free license.

"This is being done not only for reuse in other state projects, but also for use by anyone who wants it. In fact, we are talking about introducing free software into civilian circulation," Alexey Smirnov commented for RSpectr.

The expert believes that the results of the experiment are of interest to honest developers who transfer the rights and source codes of the software developed under the state order to the state customer. The latter receives exclusive rights to such software and can, in particular, publish it under a free license. But after publication, both the quality of the program code and whether it corresponds to the original tender documentation are visible.

Alexey Smirnov, Basalt SPO:

– After publication, the developer can legally independently refine and develop the product, including for commercial use. Other developers also receive this right, which is natural, because the product was developed with taxpayers' money.

This software development model will facilitate the development of standard software products, such as municipal government portals, believes Grigory Sizonenko, CEO of IVK. Such a standard solution will only need to be adapted to the needs of a specific customer, which is much faster and cheaper compared to individual development. Accordingly, this approach will save government funds allocated for the development of software products, Grigory Sizonenko explained in a conversation with RSpectr.

Ilmar Khabibulin, head of the integrated development department at NGR Softlab, told RSpectr that IT companies developing GIS are interested in the specific results of this experiment: the availability of accessible and free infrastructure software implementing low-level system-wide and integration functions, which will reduce the costs of developing additional modules for interfacing with various GIS, and for performing common tasks that were previously implemented by each system independently.