Russia To Develop a National Operating System

Elektroschock writes "According to Russian media, the Russian Government is going to develop a National Operating System (Google translation; Russian original) to lower its dependencies on foreign software technology licensing. The Russian plan will base its efforts on Linux and expects a worldwide impact. Microsoft is also involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation. The Chinese government successfully lowered its Microsoft licensing costs through an early investment in a national Linux distribution. I wonder if other large markets, such as the European Union, will also develop their own Linux distributions or join in the Russian initiative."

In Soviet russia

[by Anonymous Coward]

System operates YOU!

russia Soviet In Re:

[MindKata (957167)]

"Look this joke is very simple. If it doesn't make sense when you reverse it, you're doing it wrong. If we reverse your joke we get: You operate system."

system operate You: get we joke your reverse we if wrong it doing, you're it reverse you when sense make doesn't it. If simple very is joke this Look.

I still don't get it? ;)

And there won't be *any* backdoors...

[rpjs (126615)]

...installed by the FSB or whatever it is the KGB is calling itself these days, honest tovarishch.

Don't they already have one?

[140Mandak262Jamuna (970587)]

Isn't their National Operating System called Communism?

Re:Don't they already have one?

[CrimsonScythe (876496)]

No, it's called Lenix.

Re:Don't they already have one?

[jellomizer (103300)]

I bet Microsoft would have a field day with that.

Proof! Open Source = Communism

Re:Don't they already have one?

[Nerdfest (867930)]

It would totally have to be based on RedHat.

Re:Don't they already have one?

[jonaskoelker (922170)]

I hear it's designed to run a certain extremely aggressive Scheme compiler...

(apt-cache search is your friend)

Re:Don't they already have one?

[couchslug (175151)]

"No, it's called Lenix."

Lenix was a beta version, superseded by Stalix, Kruschix, etc. These are no longer maintained but have a few die hard fanbois.

Current dominance of Putix reflects a determination to "embrace and extend" similar to that of the Stalix developers, but with much more polished marketing.

Competing distros such as Tsarix and Democratix serve niche markets.

Re:Don't they already have one?

[gsslay (807818)]

I believe Trotskyux was popular for a while, but discontinued after being shown to be susceptible to hacking.

Too many morons in EU Parliament

[VincenzoRomano (881055)]

EU politiacians don't understand (or don't want to) the importance, the strategy and the economics of an EU-wide open-source policy!
Private interests are more important by far!

Bonus feature...

[GameMaster (148118)]

If it detects you making unfavorable comments about Putin it send your address off to a mailing center where they send you a free "gift" package of Polonium-laced tea (Earl Gray, of course, to increase the chance of computer geeks drinking it).

In other news

[rolfwind (528248)]

Nasa and the military are cooperating with Microsoft on the next generation of ICBM. With Chair-based warheads.

Save money on licences...

[ds_job (896062)]

... but spend money on developing an operating system. Can they not just save all the hassle and choose Red Hat / Ubuntu / Debian / SlackWare / Mandriva / anything else at http://distrowatch.com [distrowatch.com]?

Seems like reinventing the wheel here.

It's about time!

[MarkEst1973 (769601)]

Why any country would voluntarily base their national security on imported, closed-source, non-free software is beyond my reasoning. If a country wants to control its infrastructure, it must use free software. Same goes for us computers users, too, of course, but the stakes are much higher for a sovereign nation.

Not just yet

[qWen71n (1176393)]

What the article actually says, is that some members of Russian parliament are just _proposing_ to develop a national OS. M$ representatives, on the other hand, say that it is not a national OS which Russia need, but to make use the technologies which are already exist. so, don't get excited just yet - there are many things they talk about in Russia.

cccp

[canuck08 (1421409)]

Will it be written in C..C..C Plus?

Re:cccp

[gsslay (807818)]

Nope.

It will be developed in .NIET

The summary is wrong. Again.

[Akral (975984)]

The article says that this is an idea, raised by some random people and it is only being organized and will be later offered to president Medvedev as a proposition. Calling it a fact, as the summary did, is so yellow press it hurts.

I see why Russia wants this

[Teancum (67324)]

I can totally see why Russia would want to have this happen... at least their own distro for use internally within the Russian government.

• Developers - By directly sponsoring a complete distro, they have their own developers who are both actively engaged within the greater Linux community, know the kernel cold (there certainly are Russian programmers who can be and are even now developing software currently in the kernel), and have their loyalties to the Russian society even if not directly to the Russian government. This means Russia has the developer base to keep up with the rest of the world in a critical area.
• Security - If there is anybody paranoid about security, I don't know who is worse than the Russian government. The only way to have a genuinely secure operating system is to review each and every line of code that goes into that OS by somebody both with the skills necessary to properly evaluate the software, and the loyalty to the organization necessary to fix things that seem out of place. See also the above point, which is even more critical here.
• Meeting local needs - by having a group that is embedded within the Russian culture that certainly is not a part of the Silicon Valley culture, they have a much better grasp of what is needed for their own local society. While working with Cyrillic characters isn't that much different from Latin characters, this is but one situation where local support is desperately needed. Interfacing with older Soviet systems is certainly an issue as well... I can only imagine some of the compatibility issues that would have to be worked out there.
• National pride - There is also a little bit of national pride on the line here as well. Having something "made in Russia" is powerfully attractive for a number of reasons... at the very least to show that your country is able to keep up with the best and the brightest on the planet. Of all the reasons I've listed, this really is the least significant, but the one most head-smacking obvious and ultimately the one that would best sell to a legislative body that has to pay for any significant expenses to get this project going. I certainly doubt that Russian citizens are going to be upset with a modest expense being directed in this fashion through their tax dollars.

A top to bottom review of the Linux kernel from another group of developers with a completely different interests, backgrounds, and motivations than other major contributors to Linux would also be a very good thing for the development of Linux as a whole. I wish Russia the best on getting this accomplished, and I hope that their success is huge.

It isn't like the American government doesn't do this too. The NSA (National Security Agency... aka the USA cyber spys) has their own distro for most of the reasons I've listed above, and has nearly continuous recruitment going on at college campuses for CS graduates. The Red Flag distro (Chinese) is another national distro that has been done for more than just pressuring Microsoft into lowering the price of Windows.

Frankly, I see Microsoft's involvement here as a red herring and something to ignore for this discussion.

Re:Reduce the cost of licensing?

[jandrese (485)]

It apparently matters to someone, since China apparently got the price lowered as well. I have to wonder if it was worth all of the international hooplah to reduce the price of the single copy of Windows they bought.

Re:Reduce the cost of licensing?

[erroneus (253617)]

It matters at least on the surface. The "big deal" is being a member of the WTO. You can't be a player in the WTO if you are branded as a thief. The other kids won't want to play with you!

But, just as Ernie Ball, moving away from Microsoft is a good plan and illustrates perfectly now they are not as necessary as people think. But invariably, people are lured into taking the "easy" path... not changing and settling for a lower price and incentive to stay. "Lower price" is not the only incentive, of course... but officially, lower price is the incentive.

Re:Reduce the cost of licensing?

[Teancum (67324)]

I find the Russian attitude toward copyright to be mostly refreshing. They do want to give incentives for people to make a little money from creative works, but there isn't the perpetual and infinite lifetime to creative works that seems to be prevalent in western Europe and has infected legal circles within the USA.

The way that Russians treat copyrighted material of others is pretty much how they want to have their own content treated. At least they are consistent in this manner. It certainly doesn't compare to the blatant copyright infringements that happen in China.

Yes - sound strategic policy

[JSBiff (87824)]

Seriously, not being dependent on foreign companies for critical national technological infrastructure is in the strategic national interests of every nation on earth. If you are a foreign nation, how do you know that the OS you are getting from $OS_Vendor doesn't have 'wiretaps', back-doors, remote kill switches, or other secrets in the software which $OS_Vendor, or the nation to which $OS_Vendor is based out of, can use to cripple you? Another problem is, that $OS_Vendor could simply stop providing you with necessary patches to update known problems and vulnerabilities in the OS.

One possible solution would be, if you are using a closed-source vendor, to require that vendor to provide the government with buildable source code, which could be reviewed by your own Computer Scientists, then built by your government, and distributed throughout the nation. This also allows your developers to provide your nation with patches and support if you are cut off from support from $OS_Vendor. That is not true Open-Source, but that is still, effectively, a "National Operating System". Open Source is one step better though, because you have, potentially, a lot larger base of people that are reviewing the code. That whole Eric Raymond thing to the effect that with sufficiently many eyes, all bugs are shallow.

Just saying that some foreign leader that is not well liked has something in common with another leader is sort of mis-leading, because there will often be many things in common between good leaders and bad leaders - what's important often isn't the similarities, but the differences.

Re:In Russia

[Lumpy (12016)]

No you have to enter all commands by answering riddles, and every user prompt has a corny cartoon look to your login..

Plus when you call IT they always solve the problem and end the call with "I AM INVINCIBLE!" Call you a "SLUG HEAD" and send a thing called a "SPIKE" all the time really strange.