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Russian Bill Makes Free Software a Public Priority

posted by takyon on Tuesday November 15 2016, @08:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the free-vs-paymerican dept.

mrpg writes:

Legislators have drafted a bill [PDF in Russian] that will boost Free Software on multiple levels within the Russian Federation's public sector.

The draft, approved by the Russian Federation's Duma (lower chamber) in mid-October, requires the public sector to prioritise Free Software over proprietary alternatives, gives precedence to local IT businesses that offer Free Software for public tenders, and recognises the need to encourage collaboration with the global network of Free Software organisations and communities.

[...] Another interesting aspect of the law is how the authors of the bill have made an extra effort to ensure the language used in the draft are correct. For one, only software carrying licenses that allow the four freedoms may be legally labelled as "Free Software":

Source: Free Software Foundation Europe

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:36PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:36PM (#427590)

    SaaS is not an end run around the four freedoms, it's an end run around the GPL and many other licenses, which imperfectly implement the ideology espoused by the four freedoms.

    I like to think of it in comparison to the sages who advised against actually writing down laws in the ancient past - the reasoning being that once the laws are actually written down, criminals will use them as a tool to escape punishment by finding loopholes that allow them to commit their crimes in a technically legal fashion... which is pretty much exactly what has happened (whether it's actually an improvement or not... well that's another discussion).

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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:40PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:40PM (#427594)

    Hmm, actually that should be:
    ...which imperfectly safeguard the ideology espoused by the four freedoms.