Russia will create a national repository for publishing and storing software source codes and additional data. They can be freely used by both individuals and legal entities.

An experiment to provide software (the rights to which belong to Russia) under an open license is going to be carried out from May 1, 2022 to April 30, 2024. Digital products created using budgetary funds will be placed in the repository in the first instance. In particular, e-government infrastructure software, with the exception of components that provide cryptographic data protection functions.

The operator of the national repository will be determined by the Russian Foundation for the Development of Information Technologies. Among the participants in the experiment are the Ministry of Digital Development, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rosreestr, and the Pension Fund. The final list will be presented by June 1.

Sergei Sergienko, the Advisor to the Minister of Digital Development specifies that the repository will become the Russian analog of GitHub (the largest open source repository). According to Sergienko, the aim of the experiment is to determine which programs should be made available and the criteria for their publication.

Earlier, the Ministry of Economic Development and Sberbank proposed to allocate $27.9 million (2.1 billion rubles) to create a platform similar to GitHub. The need to create a platform was explained by the risk of disconnecting Russia from foreign code repositories.

Original (in Russian)