Russia will save 41.785 million euros in software licenses

On January 7, the Ministry of Communication approved the prototype of the national software platform (PSN), operating system which will replace a Windows across computers de officials y school middle school Russians. Instead of a single distribution of the PNS, the design company PingWin Software proposes to elaborate four, each created by one of the leading Russian Linux designers.

ALT Linux - OS Russian operating system on which the NPP: National Platform of Programs will be based.

Through this national software platform, Russian officials hope to achieve significant savings in the public budget invested in acquiring software licenses over time. In the presentation of the project, it is announced that, in a few years, it will be possible to save up to 80% of all these expenses, that is, 1,72 trillion rubles (about 41.785 million euros).

It was in the summer of 2010 that there was talk for the first time about designing a "Russian analog of Windows." The officials decided that it would be better not to create the operating system from scratch, but to be based on one of the Linux distributions, with open source codes, as is done throughout the world. According to the State Program "Information Community", approved in October 2010 for 2011-2020, during the first two years of operation of the program an investment of 490 million rubles is planned in the design of the PSN. The program foresees that one year after its launch, this national platform will be the protagonist of 2% of all installations carried out on Russian computers, without taking into account the federal and local public administration agencies, that is, only thanks to companies and public institutions. After another year, this figure would reach 5%.

The award to design the prototype of the PSN was won at the end of September 2011 by the company PingWin Software, part of the NGI fund. One of its most important shareholders is the former communications minister Leonid Réiman. In the summer, PingWin supported the declaration of the non-profit Russian Partnership for the Promotion of Free Software Development (RASPO), which ruled against the conditions of this contest. RASPO did not like the too short prototype deadlines, and neither did the idea of ​​creating a single version of the PSN. PingWin CEO Dmitri Komissárov promised that he would also hire computer scientists from the companies that are part of RASPO to design the PSN.

PingWin delivered the prototype documentation at the end of October. The state took almost two more months to approve it. During this period, according to the conditions of the “Information Community” program, one more competition had to be held: a tender to design, before the end of 2011, the PSN distribution model.

"A prototype is a complicated object," explains valuation committee expert Vitali Lipatov, CEO of the Etersoft company in St. Petersburg, which makes Linux-based software. "It is a project of great proportions, it includes 73 sections and none of them is reduced to pressing a button," Komissárov told the newspaper Védomosti. According to Komissárov, the tests lasted five days, three in the ministry itself, and two at a distance. "Lipátov, one of the members of the commission, is the architect of Alt Linux, a Linux system that competes with him, so the commission has studied the creation of PingWin in a very exhaustive way, without overlooking anything," he says. the expert. Lipatov explains that he had objections to the PingWin prototype testing method. The project was revised several times, and several times it was returned to make the corresponding improvements, Minister Igor Shchyogolev confirmed recently. However, at yesterday's meeting, the commission admitted that PingWin had corrected its project as directed, while other criticisms were deemed less relevant, Komissárov is pleased to say.

“One of the results of the creation of the PSN prototype is the elaboration of the technical study for the design of its platform, and PingWin has proposed, instead of making a model, to be based on the main Russian distribution kits, namely: Alt Linux, MSVSfera, Naulinux and Rosá ”, says Komissárov. PingWin has shown versions of these distros that are compatible with each other. Finally, a compilation of algorithms and software compatible with all distributions has to appear, and an operator to maintain this repertoire.

The vice minister of communications Ilyá Massuj told the newspaper Védomosti yesterday that the software for the PSN will not only be able to be registered within the Linux framework, but also the ministries, institutions and public companies will actively rent software through the Internet, with the help cloud computing services.

Source: Russia Today