To be included in the register of domestic software, its source code will have to be submitted for evaluation at the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media

Head of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media Nikolay Nikiforov

In order for the software to be recognized as Russian, its source code will need to be submitted for evaluation by the expert council at the Ministry of Communications, informs Izvestia. At the same time, the expert council will include representatives of the IT business who will have access to the development and will be able to familiarize themselves with it.

The relevant decree on changing the order of inclusion of software in the national registry is prepared by the Ministry of Communications. Further it will be transferred to the government of the Russian Federation. The ministry plans to oblige developers to transfer all "the materials that identify the software in the form of source code, object code, or some other form inherent in the programming language in which the presented software is written, in a volume sufficient to identify it."

Previously, to include the product in the software registry, it was enough to provide a copy of the program without copyright protection. Now the Ministry of Communications wants to receive the full source code for its analysis. The expert council consists of representatives of the IT-industry, scientific organizations and authorities. Representatives of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media state that such measures will not entail significant changes in the order of including the software in the registry .

The idea of ​​obliging to provide source code was discussed back in October 2016. Then the industry representatives opposed a similar initiative of the Ministry of Communications. At that time, mutual understanding was reached and it was decided that the source code was needed only when writing software to order.
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The requirements of the Ministry of Communications to provide the source code of domestic software is based on the fact that in compiled form it is impossible to assess what the end user will have to deal with. In addition, the provision of software in the assembled state does not allow to make changes to it and upgrade without the participation of the developer .

Representatives of software manufacturers consider the requirements of the ministry redundant. Thus, Yevgenia Vasilenko, executive director of the Software Product Development Association (ARPP) “Otechestvenniy Soft”, said that her organization would oppose the amendments. In addition, the new requirements of the Ministry of Communications will exclude from the list of "domestic software" products that have a long history - their developers simply will not go to the opening source.

“In my opinion, the requirement of disclosing source code is redundant. There are products that are originally built on the basis of free software, are open source. There are systems that have been developed for decades from scratch by Russian companies. The code of such software, in my opinion, the companies will not be ready to open to the expert council, ”said Vasilenko.

If the initiative of the Ministry of Communications on the transfer of the source code is adopted, the question arises what to do to the company-developer during and after the approval period. In fact, any patch or developer action changes the source code of the software and, formally, it will need to be reconciled again.