Ministry of Digital Development is working on an initiative to oblige software developers included in the domestic software register to adjust their products for Russian operating systems based on Linux.

Alexey Smirnov, head of the board of directors of Basealt SPO (developer of Alt Linux) says, “now a significant part of the software in the register can run only on foreign operating systems, the new version of the government decree prohibiting the admission of foreign software to public procurement provides for a note in the register about mandatory compatibility of the software product with domestic operating systems”. Alexey Smirnov believes the requirement should be introduced in stages for various classes of software, since “for cybersecurity tools, office software and database management systems, it can be introduced immediately without loss, but for production automation systems it will take about two years”.

The initiative is supported by the Astra, Red Soft and MyOffice companies. According to the sources of Kommersant, the share of Linux-based devices is growing mostly due to the supplies to state institutions, the public sector and some state corporations. The developers of application software have been developing software for corporate segment on the basis of Windows and Oracle since establishment, because these “were and still de-facto are the basic standards in the sector”.

Original in Russian