The Ministry of Digital Development aims OS – Newspaper Kommersant No. 203 (7404) dated 11/01/2022

The Ministry of Digital Development conducted a survey of businesses and software developers to select “target” Russian operating systems, which resulted in the identification of three operating systems based on Linux. According to market participants, this is necessary to optimize state support and make it easier for developers to adapt programs to a specific system, of which there are now more than 50 in the domestic software registry. But experts see another possible goal of the study – to assess the readiness of companies to abandon Microsoft software and OS.

Kommersant’s interlocutors in the Russian IT market said that the Ministry of Digital Development plans to identify the three most promising domestic operating systems (OS) for state support included in the register of Russian software. In the future, the ministry, says one of Kommersant’s sources, wants to oblige Russian developers to adapt their software to these systems.

According to an interlocutor close to the Ministry of Digital Development, in July the ministry ordered a study to the Competence Center for Import Substitution in ICT (TsKICT) to determine the most popular operating systems for Russian companies. TsKIKT has already sent the preliminary results of the study to the office of Deputy Head of the Ministry of Digital Development Maxim Parshin. According to the results of the survey, the Kommersant source says, three priority OSes have been identified: Astra Linux (Astra Group of Companies), Alt OS (BasAlt SPO) and Red OS (Red Soft), all of them are based on Linux. The study was confirmed by the press service of the Ministry of Digital Development, without specifying the purpose. Astra Group of Companies, Red Soft and Bazalt SPO declined to comment.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions, a number of foreign software and OS vendors stopped selling and supporting their systems in Russia, including Microsoft, Red Hat, and others. The government invited Russian companies to switch to Russian OS. However, Russian software from the register of the Ministry of Digital Development is still mostly not adapted to domestic operating systems, which complicates the transition (see Kommersant of September 20).

The president of the Russoft association, Valentin Makarov, assumes that three domestic operating systems will be enough for Russian enterprises. “I can assume that other operating systems that are not popular will not be supported and developed by their developers, and therefore will gradually leave the registry,” he adds.

Mr. Makarov emphasizes that each OS requires the development of separate applications, maintaining their compatibility, and as a result, additional costs are borne by users. “It is a common practice to give the most commonly used software, and the OS is probably the most common segment, the status of a standard or quasi-standard, which reduces the cost of developing applications and ensuring their compatibility with such standards,” adds Valentin Makarov.

A Kommersant source familiar with the situation assured that there are no plans to exclude domestic systems that are not in the top 3 in terms of popularity from the register: “But software developers will focus on priority operating systems, since they cannot spend resources on maintaining all “. So far, it is not completely clear, the interlocutor of Kommersant clarifies how exactly the ministry will prescribe compatibility with domestic operating systems for software developers – in a recommendatory or compulsory manner.

The initiative of the Ministry of Digital Development is logical, software developers need to understand what kind of system they need to adapt their software to, says Factory5 CEO (developing industrial software) Denis Kasimov. “However, most likely, such a survey is conducted not to promote specific operating systems, but to determine the compatibility of corporate systems with domestic operating systems,” the expert believes. Perhaps, he admits, the Ministry of Digital Development is trying to determine the readiness of companies to refuse to use Windows.

Timofey Kornev