Putin Orders Russian Move to GNU/Linux

This looks huge:

Глава правительства Владимир Путин подписал план перехода властных структур и федеральных бюджетников на свободное ПО. Согласно документу, внедрение Linux во власти должно начаться во II квартале 2012 г.

Сегодня стало известно, что премьер-министр Владимир Путин подписал документ, в котором описан график перехода властных структур на свободное ПО (СПО).

Документ называется «План перехода федеральных органов власти и федеральных бюджетных учреждений на использование свободного программного обеспечения» и освещает период с 2011 до 2015 г.

[Via Google Translate: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a plan for transition of power structures and the federal budget [to] free software. According to the document, the introduction of Linux in government should begin in II quarter 2012.

Today it became known that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a document which describes the timetable for the transition of power structures on free software (OSS).

The document is called a "transition plan of the federal authorities and federal budgetary institutions on the use of free software, and covers the period from 2011 to 2015.]

The key document with that timetable (in Russian) is here; Google's translation of the salient part:

1. Approve the attached plan for the transition of federal executive bodies and agencies of the federal budget for the use of free software for 2011 - 2015 years.

2.Federal executive agencies to implement activities in accordance with the plan approved by this Order, within the established government of the Russian Federation, limiting the size of their staff and budget allocations provided to them in the federal budget execution authority to the specified area of activity.

Prime Minister

The Russian Federation Vladimir Putin

The fact that Putin has signed the order for this project could be critical: there have been several previous plans for moving parts of the Russian government to using free software, notably in the educational sector, but in practice they have mostly failed to materialise because there has been insufficient political weight behind them. But if Putin says: "make it so", I suspect that a lot of people will jump pretty fast to make sure that it *is* so. And once that happens, other plans to roll out free software might well suddenly look rather more attractive.

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A World-Beating Report on Global Open Source

Something entitled “Report on the International Status of Open Source Software 2010” sounds pretty dry, as does its summary:

The objective of this report is to understand the role played by open source software in the Information and Communications Technologies sector around the world, and to highlight its economic and social impact, on both advanced economies and emerging countries, by analysing the ecosystems that foster the development of open source software: the Public sector, the Private sector, Universities and Communities of Developers.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Final Acts of ACTA

Although the current excitement over the gradual release of the Wikileaks documents is justified in that it concerns what is undoubtedly an important development for the future of the Internet, it has rather overshadowed another area where crucial decisions are being made: the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). In fact, ACTA finally seems to be nearing the end of its slow and painful crawl through the secret negotiation process that only recently we have been allowed glimpses of. And the more we learn, the more troublesome it is.

On Open Enterprise blog.