The new life of the old Open Source idea. Sergey Sergienko, Ministry of Digital Arts - on the publication of the code of state systems under an open license

Sergey Sergienko: The topic of open software in the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications is supervised by Deputy Minister Maxim Parshin. The idea of ​ ​ an open state license was born quite a long time ago, a few years ago. When we were engaged in the project of the national data management system (NSUD), we realized that there are a number of components and solutions in the system that would be easier to develop with the participation of the community and the market. These decisions were created according to the patterns of open software and it would be illogical to develop them exclusively for budget funds and limit their use by the public administration sector. The NSUD project in a sense has become a catalyst for the emergence of an open state license. This direction has a very good prospect in the market.

I can not say that there is one single evangelist of this topic. We have people in the ministry who are interested in this, and who believe that practical benefits can come out of it. While this is an initiative that is being worked out, we are thinking about how to implement it.

And in the market, too, many believe in this. Recently, in a Telegram channel with about 700 participants in the Russian opensource community, I did a survey on the topic needed or did not need an open state license. About 60% of survey participants generally supported the idea.

Sergey Sergienko: The Ministry of Digital Affairs had a state contract that ended in April 2021, according to which we modernized the data mart software as part of the NSUD project. Then we set the task for the contractor - together with the transfer of this software to open components, to prepare for us a draft open state license. It was one of the artifacts that appeared following the results of the state contract.

After that, we held a series of consultations with ministries and departments that are somehow relevant to the issue. Among them are the Federal Property Management Agency, Rospatent, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education and Science, and the FSB. It was necessary to determine whether such a license could be applied to the results that appear for budget funds, how to keep records of such software. And a number of other practical issues.

Sergey Sergienko: BFT Company. The amount of the contract is 45 million rubles.

Sergey Sergienko: We chose the most popular license recently - ASF 2.0 as the basis. It is permissive, that is, in fact, does not impose any restrictions on changing the code and using the derivative software. We initially thought to use it so that it was possible to apply the program code developed for budget funds without any restrictions.

This is not about the fact that we transfer everything and everything: there may be systems, components that are not subject to publication. But some public systems that others may need can be published under such an open license so that the market picks up this, uses it, develops it. This point seems quite important to us - if the software is created at the expense of budget funds, including taxes, it is logical and correct to allow taxpayers to use such software free of charge, including monetizing it.

The state, of course, is interested in this, because it will be possible not to spend big funds on it year after year, but to spend them once and connect the market to the development of this software. Thus, the market will pull up, and the state will be able to save - there may be mutual interest.

Sergey Sergienko: In this direction, we began to move somewhere else in 2009-2010, but then everything came down to the fact that the National Fund of Algorithms and Programs (NFAP) appeared. But it is difficult to call it an open platform, it does not motivate anyone, including the reuse of software. Only 285 objects have been published in the NFAP, despite the fact that there are 4051 GIS (754 federal and 3297 regional), according to the latest presidential report.

Now, when we transfer the software to the NFAP, we are faced with the fact that organizations do not want to use the software from the NFAP, they offer us to sign an agreement with them, and transfer the software on it. To the question "why?" they answer that no one takes anything from there, and they do not want to be the first and do not want to be bound by some incomprehensible obligations.

Sergey Sergienko: The community and I disagreed on what this should look like, because we first proceeded from the fact that there should be one text of an open state license that would help us eliminate the "zoo" of licenses and have a Russian-language translation, agreed with lawyers from the Ministry of Finance and regulators - FSTEK, FSB, interested departments. But the opinion of the community is that there is no need for one license, because they are all very different, and it is better to make methodological recommendations on the use of different types of licenses and their Russian translations.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle and we are likely to have a license text that is recommended for certain cases. For example, when we publish software created at the expense of budget funds, for such a scenario there should be one, single state license. But if you use software that is transferred under a different type of license, then we really need to issue guidelines that tell officials what to do with it. The European Union is moving in about the same direction. I see it this way: the Ministry of Digital Affairs takes the text of an open license, which already exists, together with the community, we eliminate comments on this text, we accept it.

Plus, together with experts from the Open Code ANO, the creation of which was announced in December by Ilya Massukh, director of the Center for Import Substitution in the field of ICT, we will develop methodological recommendations on how to apply other types of licenses for use in government agencies.

Sergey Sergienko: This is still at the level of ours - the Ministry of Digital Affairs - desires. The state could act as a member of this community, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, we would like, by analogy with large foreign corporations, such as IBM, Microsoft, to direct the vector of development. They ultimately determine where the product develops. We would like to retain this role at least on the decisions that we pass on to the community. How to do this, the issue is complex and so far open.

There is a generally accepted term "change committee," as some kind of advisory body, which should include interested persons representing the interests of the State and representatives of the community. Dialogue mode should regularly decide which branches are included in the base version. How this will work in detail, you need to negotiate with experts who deeply know this "kitchen." In principle, we even have written methods and processes, how this could work, but we would not want to dictate here, we would like to negotiate. And the Open Code, created by the ANO, in our opinion, could become a good platform to agree on mutually acceptable rules there.

As for the communists, they must manifest themselves: these may be market participants and individuals with ambitions that are interested in participation. No one will specially select commuters, the results will be selected by the community - software branches that are suitable for inclusion in the basic version of the product. But, of course, the refinement of open source software under state contracts also does not need to be prohibited.

Sergey Sergienko: The regulatory framework is in the first place. There are no direct rules that allow you to take what you have done even for budget funds and give it to the public. But here is a rather subtle moment: not one of the departments said "no" or "yes" to our question. There is regulatory uncertainty here, and for general reasons, no one usually wants to take risks. Therefore, the "rules of the game" must be clearly specified - what software, how can be published, for what purposes, etc.

At the same time, it is not enough to publish open code, it is important to create conditions for the state to also receive something from this: new functions, opportunities that the market can bring to this software. For the sake of this, everything is done: we give what we spent money on and create conditions so that the state can take advantage of the new opportunities that arise. To make this possible, some regulations will need to be amended.

Minister Maksut Shadayev recently said at a meeting that it would be better if the state did not interfere much. Usually, where the state is less involved, everything works better. Therefore, we will avoid the effect of an elephant in a dishware shop, we will not try to dictate any of our conditions, we will try to create new opportunities without restricting anyone.

Sergey Sergienko: Yes, a careful balance is really needed here. And if you look at the development of IT as a whole, we are more and more beginning to use the fruits of the work of open source developers - in fact, all government agencies, and the movement in one direction looks already strange. This is what is now when government agencies consume, but do not give anything to the outside.

This is the problem: all systems written in the ACT soon begin to lag far behind the versions that are current. And this leads to the fact that you can again spend hundreds of millions of rubles on rewriting systems instead of involving the community and keeping your system up to date with its help. Therefore, if the state does not fully give the results of its work to the community, we will very quickly come to an impasse.

Sergey Sergienko: NSUD is essentially a distributed database. There is a core, an administrative part, a display case software. There is also a public services platform that can be interesting to many as a lowcode platform, including large corporations. With it, you can configure various business processes, services, and services. All this is written on open source software, there is nothing proprietary inside. This is a mature decision, and, among other things, we decided to start publishing developments with it.

It seems that this will be in demand. At least now we are communicating with the regions. There are many integrators, developers. We see that they use it. Publishing this software under an open license means giving it a second life.

Now it is important to create a precedent and if it is created successfully, it will be possible to lay out other components.